Knockemstiff (16 page)

“No,” I managed to say.

“Check him out, Larry,” the older cop said with a chuckle. “I’ll cover you.”

“Fuck, I ain’t touching that skanky bastard,” the younger cop said. “He’s probably got the AIDS or something.”

They stood there for a minute watching me, then the older cop said, “Dog, where in the hell do you think you are?”

“Portsmouth,” I said.

“Stand up when he’s talking to you,” the younger cop ordered.

“I can’t,” I groaned. “I’m still sick.”

Then he pointed his gun at me. “I said to stand up, motherfucker.”

I stood up, holding my pants out of the mess with my hands. “Put your hands in the air,” the older cop said. I bit my lip, then raised my hands and let my jeans drop to the ground.

“Now, I want you to march in place, like you’re in my army,” the younger cop said, nudging his partner with his elbow. “You know how to do that, dog?” They both stepped back. I raised one knee, then lowered it and pressed my jeans down into the spreading puddle. As I lifted the other leg, I looked over and saw Dee scoot behind the wheel, a blank look on her face. Marshall had covered his head with my coat. If I could have wrestled a gun from one of the cops, I gladly would have killed us all at that moment.

“Please, officers,” I said, my voice shaking. “I don’t want no trouble. I got my family in the car.”

The older cop looked over at the Pinto. “Go call in the plate,” he told his partner. Then, as the younger cop walked back to the cruiser, he asked me, “Where you from, dog?”

“Meade,” I answered. “Can I pull my pants back up now?”

“Not yet,” he said.

We stood in the cold until the other cop came back and said the car was clean. “All right, go the fuck back where you come from,” the older cop said.

“Yeah, and you better think twice before you take a shit in Portsmouth again,” said the muscled one. Then they both busted a gut as they walked to the cruiser.

I pulled my pants up and watched them back down the alley, then I started to get in the car. “You’re not getting in here like that,” Dee said. I looked around, pulled a flattened cardboard box out of the Dumpster and laid it on the passenger seat. “Oh, God,” she said when I slid in and slammed the door shut. “You should kill yourself.” My jeans and hands were pasted with shit.

Jerking open the glove box, I fumbled around for the Oxy I’d brought with me. “It’ll be all right,” I said as I chewed the tablets up, and tried to calm down.

“Oh, Marshall, did you hear that?” Dee said sarcastically. “Daddy says everything is going to be just fine and fuckin’ dandy.” She wheeled out of the alley and drove a block down the street, then pulled over. Even with the windows open, the smell of me was sickening. “Walk over there and clean up,” Dee said, pointing to a Chinese restaurant across the street.

“Just go sell the fuckin’ blood,” I said. “I ain’t going nowhere. It’s your goddamn fault I got sick in the first place.”

Twisting around in the seat, she began punching at me wildly. “I should make you get out right here, you sonofabitch,” Dee screamed.

“Fuck you,” I said, grabbing her fists. “And keep your voice down before those fuckin’ cops come back.”

“We’re going home,” she said, breaking loose of my grip and jamming the car into gear.

“I’ll be goddamned. Go to the clinic.”

“It’s my blood, you bastard.”

“Jesus Christ, Dee,” I said. “Please.”

“No. Things got to change.”

She headed the car north on High; we were going home empty-handed after all that trouble. I lit my last cigarette and stared out the window. By the time we reached Waverly, the pills I’d swallowed had cast me into a sweet, warm ocean. For the next few minutes, I dreamily considered changing my life; I decided to quit the Oxy once I’d finished the ’script I was on. With the right therapy, I could land a decent job. I saw myself as a construction foreman, maybe even a drug counselor. We’d move out of the stinking trailer and into a nice house. I could see us in church on Sundays, our son singing in the choir. And then I nodded off.

When I woke up, I was lost and confused. Darkness had settled all around me, and I was shivering with the cold. It took me a minute or two to figure out that I was sitting in the Pinto in front of our trailer. As I started to climb out, I discovered the cardboard box stuck to my backside. For a few seconds, I thought that some sonofabitch had pulled a sick joke on me, but then I recalled the trip to Portsmouth, the cops in the alley, the fight with Dee. I dropped back down into the seat, lit my lighter and searched around for another pill. But the dash was empty. Then, getting out of the car, I tore the cardboard off me and got more of the cold, clammy shit on my hands.

Stumbling up to the concrete porch and digging for my house key, I happened to glance in the window. Dee and Marshall were cuddled together on the couch like two happy birds. They were eating toast and crumbs were flying everywhere, my son was talking so fast. I watched his lips moving, forming words I’d never heard him say. I pressed my ear to the door, my heart pounding, and listened to his excited, stuttering voice. For a moment, I thought I was witnessing some kind of miracle. But then, as I stood there, I slowly began to realize that Marshall had been talking all along, just not around me.

I stepped away from the door and took a deep breath of the cold air. I realized I was in the middle of one of those moments in life where great things are possible, if a person is willing to make the right choice. A car drove by, shining its headlights on me, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. I could already see myself coming back in a year or two, clean and ready to do right by my family. Everyone would praise me, maybe even forget my past. But then I thought about the bottle of Oxy in the medicine cabinet and I stopped. I lifted my filthy hands and smeared the shit across my face, through my hair. Turning back, I grabbed hold of the door handle, and stuck my key in the lock. I heard everything go silent and sad inside the trailer as I pushed the door open, but I didn’t care. Just one more time, just once more before I left, I needed to feel blessed.

HONOLULU

H
ALF THE TIME NOW THE ONLY THING CRAWLING AROUND
in Howard Bowman’s worn-out head is that four-letter word, the one swear that his wife no longer allows in the house. Back when he was still in good shape, Peg gave him an ultimatum. “No more, Howard. If you say that damn word one more time, I’m leaving. My Lord, you got the grandkids saying it.” Now look at him, afraid to say it, the only goddamn thing that makes sense anymore. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

 . . . . . 

S
ITTING STRAIGHT UP IN HIS STICKY PLASTIC RECLINER,
Howard peers into the large photograph hanging on the wall while methodically twisting curly gray hairs out of his left arm. Peg’s always pestering him with a new goal—names, dates, numbers—but every morning it’s as if another fuse has popped, another important connection ripped out of his brain while he was sleeping. Sometimes he wishes the woman would just let him rot. He yearns for the day when he’ll be wiped clean.

Earlier today, she flew into the living room and said, “Okay, Boss, see that picture?” Howard jerked awake, looked up at her with a pained expression. “On the wall over there,” Peg pointed. “Your retirement picture? Give me the names of those men by suppertime,” she told him, bending over and scraping a dab of oatmeal off his chin with the corner of her apron.

Howard stared blankly at the wall. Something was expected of him. “Which one?” he finally asked, just as he lifted his thin leg and squeaked out a small pocket of gas.

Peg groaned and took a step back. “All of them, Howard. You worked with those people at the paper mill. Remember?”

“Y-e-s,” he said slowly, lightly stroking the hair on his left arm like some kind of pet.

“Good,” she said. “Here, better write them down.” She handed Howard a little notebook and pen, then walked over and turned the TV off. “What about the bathroom?” she asked. “Do you need to go?”

Howard looked around the room, under the coffee table. The tall, big-boned woman was standing in the doorway, still watching him. “There’s a lot of them,” he said.

 . . . . . 

H
E STUDIES THE PHOTOGRAPH ALL AFTERNOON, HIS EYES
slowly turning to sand, but the only thing he can recall is that the little guy wearing the railroad hat used to buy a new Lincoln every year. Hell, even the supervisors couldn’t afford that. Out in the kitchen, Peg drops a pan that bounces across the cold linoleum, sounds like a goddamn cymbal clanging in his ears. Lately every little noise gets on his nerves, tears his guts up, makes him forget shit that no man should ever forget.

Glancing out the big picture window, Howard watches the new neighbors fall out of their trailer laughing, roll around in the snow like dogs. Convinced the ponytailed man and his fat wife were thieves from the moment they moved in across the road, Howard had Peg buy locked gas caps for both vehicles, but so far all he’s seen the bastards do is hang a dead ground-hog from the maple tree. “We’ll be damn lucky if the sheriff even finds our bodies,” Howard predicted, when he first saw the swollen carcass rocking in the breeze like a kid’s swing. He watches them jump into a banged-up Festiva plastered with bumper stickers advertising
OHIO’S SCENIC CAVERNS
and something called
MONSTER MAGNET,
then burn a little patch of rubber in front of Howard’s mailbox. A trail of black smoke follows them all the way up the road. A valve job, Howard thinks, and starts to write a note to himself to check the oil in the Buick. But then, in that mysterious way his memory works now, he suddenly recalls a night in Honolulu and a shipmate’s name. He yells for Peg.

“What?” she asks, sticking her head through the doorway.

“That guy I was telling you about the other day—the one from New York—his name was…Damn, I had it. Had a nose like a…that guy’s nose was…”

“Jesus, Howard, what about the people on the wall?” Peg yells. “You know what the doctor said. If you don’t try, it’s only going to get worse.” Suddenly, she stops and leans against the wall, takes a deep breath, counts to ten silently. “Okay, how many did you get?” she asks, her voice careful and quiet now.

“His nose was like a…” he replies.

She walks over and takes the notepad from his hand. “Oil,” she reads aloud. “That’s it? Oil? Oil what?”

Howard throws the pen across the room, then picks up the remote and stabs at the buttons until the TV pops on. A rodeo coming from Atlantic City prances across the screen. Tilting the recliner back with a hard thump, he stares red-faced at a sequined girl standing in the middle of the ring doing rope tricks.

“All right then, take a break,” Peg says, looking down at her husband. “We’ll eat maybe in an hour.” She wants to ask him if he’s been to the bathroom, but he’s already upset. Turning, she goes back into the kitchen. Howard’s made her promise that no one will ever pin a diaper on him, as if she’ll actually have a choice in the matter.

It is true that he keeps forgetting his life, but a few minutes later Howard suddenly remembers the time he and that crazy bastard from New York picked up the white floozy on that street corner in Honolulu where the little crippled Samoan sold flowers. She wore a red dress, carried a straw purse with a broken wooden handle, kept licking a cold sore on her upper lip that was as big as one of those tropical roaches. The way she walked ahead of them shaking her big ass reminded Howard of the story about the flute guy that drowned all those rats in the river; but the woman led them instead to a pink motel that advertised a radio in every room, which was pretty plush for Honolulu in 1952. Howard was up for anything that night, but when the woman turned on the light, he saw the little baby asleep in a shoe box in the corner. It reminded him of the Baby Jesus picture that Maude Speakman had tacked up in the store back home. “Hey, there’s a kid here,” Howard said, as if someone had forgotten it when they checked out.

“Yeah,” the whore said, undoing the big black buttons on her wrinkled dress. “I named him Cary, like that new movie star.”

“What? You mean he’s gonna watch us?” Howard asked.

“What’s the big deal?” the woman said. “He’s asleep. Besides, he ain’t but three months. He don’t know nothing.”

“Don’t pay no attention to him, honey,” the guy from New York said. “Howie’s from some dump in Ohio they call Knockemstiff. Shit, he ain’t never even had a pizza.”

“Lady, there ain’t no way,” Howard said angrily. “Lord, you oughta be put in jail.”

Damn, Howard thinks, suddenly leaning forward in the squeaky chair. I almost had it, that bastard’s name. Always laughing, that fucking guy. Had a nose like a tomato…like a banana…like a…

But ol’ New York had already dropped his pants, already said, “Look, babe, we ain’t here for no kissy-face. Just bend over and say your prayers.” Before he realized what he was doing, Howard grabbed the baby and ran out the door. He can still see New York’s hairy hands reaching around to squeeze the whore’s big tits and the two pale streams of milk shooting out all over the thin plaid bedspread. Howard lugged the tiny baby down the hot street, sat on a bench under a brown palm tree crawling with bugs the size of gumballs, counted each car that passed by until he figured New York had shot his three dollars’ worth.

 . . . . . 

P
EG RUSHES INTO THE LIVING ROOM, GRABS HER PURSE OFF
the piano. “We’re clear out of Crisco. You need anything?”

“Like what?” Howard asks suspiciously.

“I won’t be long,” she assures him, fluffing her flat gray hair in the mirror. “What’s my birthday, Howard?” Peg asks suddenly.

“What? Who?”

“My birthday. Try to have it when I get back, okay?” She pats him on the shoulder.

“Are you leaving?” he says.

He watches the woman back out the driveway in his wife’s car and wonders what ever happened to the people he used to know. Jesus Christ, even that kid in the motel would be damn near fifty now.

The TV rodeo drags on, high-strung horses and killer bulls and clowns that fart and shoot blue flames across the corral. Howard’s sure they’re trying to do him in with all the grease, all that goddamn noise every day, but then he seems to recall that they went somewhere far away.

I mean, I served four years with that guy, Howard thinks, fighting to hold on to the memory. I was in the United States Navy. The whore had a blond wig pinned to her head that tilted all over the place like the one that stupid clown’s wearing on the TV.

When he returned to the motel with the baby, the New York prick razzed Howard about stuff right in front of the woman, said she was tight as a mouse’s ear. Howard’s face turned purple, and the woman laughed, asked if he was ready to get his cherry popped. He dropped the baby on the bed like he was trying to bounce a basketball, got the hell out of there. Poor little guy never made a sound.

He was a good kid, Howard thinks to himself, but somehow that’s just not good enough.

Jumping up, he quickly walks down the hallway to the spare bedroom. He’s got detailed instructions written out like a recipe hidden in his wallet, but he doesn’t need them today. Reaching under the dresser, he pulls out a rolled-up piece of plastic, then spreads it on the floor. He stands there lost for a moment, then removes his dentures, wipes them on his pants, sticks them in the front pocket of his shirt. Howard still remembers where he stashed the pistol in the bottom drawer, which, just for a second, almost convinces him to wait another day. But then, easing himself down on the floor, his dried-out joints cracking like old pine, he pulls one end of the plastic up over his head like a hood, sets the barrel against his soft palate. He clicks the safety off. He smells his bad breath, wonders if he’ll shit his pants. “Okay,” he says to himself, “just squeeze the goddamn thing.” For the first time in ages, there’s nothing left to remember.

But then there’s a noise, somebody coming through the back door, probably that damn woman again, or maybe those fucking robbers from across the road. Howard lies there on the floor with the gun barrel cutting his gums and listens. He should do something, but then he’d have to start all over again. They’ve got balls to break into a man’s home, no doubt about that. Sure as hell they’re going to siphon the gas out of his truck. Christ, he thinks, the sons of bitches must be looking for the key.

He tastes blood and suddenly remembers the time his dad caught Bill Willard stealing gas out of his old Ford tractor, right after Howard went off to boot camp up at the Great Lakes. Damn, it was cold up there. The old man later wrote Howard that he’d told everyone in Hap’s Bar that Bill could suck a hose better than any damn woman in Knockemstiff, maybe the whole state of Ohio. Scrawled HA! HA! in big black letters that took up half the page. It was the only letter his father sent him all the time he was in the service; shit, probably the only letter Floyd Bowman wrote in his entire life. Staring up at the ceiling, Howard watches the shadows of early evening float across the wavy old plaster like the ghosts that swim in his head.

 . . . . . 

O
UT IN THE KITCHEN, PEG’S BUSY, COOKING WITH ONE
hand, gripping the phone in the other. She dumps sliced potatoes into the hot skillet, along with some chopped onion, and then steps back from the sputtering grease. “He must be asleep,” she says quietly into the phone. “They gave him some new stuff that just knocks him for a loop.” She covers the skillet with a lid and adjusts the flame, then bends down to light a cigarette from the stove. “No way,” Peg says. “Believe me, it’s easier just to cook at home. He started up with that F word the last time we were in Bob Evans and just wouldn’t stop. Lord, I wanted to crawl under the table.”

Sitting down at the kitchen counter, she takes a long weary drag on her cigarette as she listens to her daughter on the other end of the line go on about stuff she knows nothing about yet. “Carrie, you don’t understand,” Peg finally says, stubbing her cigarette out. “Your daddy’s second-stage already. He don’t even know me half the time.” Standing up, she tries to smooth the wrinkles out of her long corduroy dress. “No, all he talks about is Hawaii,” Peg sighs, looking out the window as the evening sun dives like a flaming bird into that other world. And just like that, for one brief beautiful moment, as the crashing rays turn the kitchen a bright blood-red, she forgets everything.