the spit and old sticky footprints on the linoleum.
The trailer comes back in focus.
I roll my eyes back in my head and catch sight of the wood-paneled door shaking on its hinges. A gust of cool air hits my face as the recently repaired door is ripped open with a sound like masking tape coming off a new paint job.
A skinny guy pokes his head inside, blocking the raw sunlight. He’s got a beat-up plastic bottle in one hand, sloshing with tobacco juice. He spits in it, eyes wide and searching.
“Howdy ho,” he calls. “Jim? Ya here?”
It’s Lyle Crosby. The laughing cowboy. The last person I want to see. But I’m in a bad spot right now and can’t be too choosy about the company I keep.
Lyle’s eyes travel to my spot on the living room floor. He surprises me and cracks a gap-toothed smile, then laughs out loud. Steps inside and closes the door behind him.
“Damn, buddy. You in here fooling with yourself? Don’t be embarrassed. Half the amp teenagers end up like this at one time or another. A little bit of self-experimentation never hurt anybody, except when it did.”
Lyle chuckles at his own joke. Then he saunters around the manufactured room, his shark-black eyes mechanically taking in the wood-paneled walls and mangy La-Z-Boy recliner and particleboard bookshelves half filled with dog-eared Westerns and thick, yellowed histories of World War II.
“I’m always telling Jim he needs a wife. Look at this place. No woman I know would put up with this crap.”
Lyle grabs a
Reader’s Digest
from the coffee table and riffles the pages with the ball of his thumb. He tosses the digest on a stack ofother magazines. They collapse in a waterfall, brittle pages slapping the floor next to my face.
He snorts at the spitty snow angels I’ve been making.
“Okay. Where’s your tools, buddy?” asks Lyle.
All I can do is breathe loudly through my teeth.
“Huh,” says Lyle. He studies the area around me, thoughtfully adjusting the pod of tobacco wedged in his mouth. Eyeing me, he sucks in his bottom lip and carefully dribbles spit into the plastic bottle.
“Starting to worry me,” he says.
With the toe of his boot, he nudges me over onto my back. My arms and face are scraped up and bruised, but Lyle doesn’t seem to notice or care. Those obsidian flakes in his face are trained on what I’m still holding in my left hand.
Lyle gets very still. An unrecognizable emotion ripples across his sweat-slicked forehead. Concern. Or maybe anger. He spits again into his bottle, slow.
“That a fact?” he asks, staring pointedly at the streaks of dried blood on my temple. “Used a fuckin’ ice pick? Damn, Jack. I guess you’re not fooling around, huh? You trying to
kill
yourself?”
Not exactly.
I look up at him, focused on keeping my eyes wide open, round, and imploring.
Yeah,
my spit-smudged face says.
Yeah, I was shit-faced drunk and alone and I was angry. I thought if I turned on the Zenith I could walk outside and kick the living crap out of a guy named Billy. But it didn’t work and I messed it up bad and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I take it back, okay?
A hint of ozone sneaks into my next gulp of air. Shit. It’s been years since my last one, but you never forget the feeling of a seizure coming on. In the seconds just before, it’s easy to get fixated on little things. And this one feels like a real grand mal because I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the glint of that vodka bottle under the couch.
“I get it,” says Lyle. “Couldn’t take it no more?”
The trapped animal whimper comes out of me again and I can sense the storm gathering inside, feel the churning thunderclouds overhead sucking all the oxygen out of the air. I allow the panic into my eyes and wrench them up to meet Lyle’s dark face. In the universal language of pain I’m chanting,
Please
help
me
. Please, please, please, oh please, don’t let another one hit me.
“People been talking about you around the
The trailer comes back in focus.
I roll my eyes back in my head and catch sight of the wood-paneled door shaking on its hinges. A gust of cool air hits my face as the recently repaired door is ripped open with a sound like masking tape coming off a new paint job.
A skinny guy pokes his head inside, blocking the raw sunlight. He’s got a beat-up plastic bottle in one hand, sloshing with tobacco juice. He spits in it, eyes wide and searching.
“Howdy ho,” he calls. “Jim? Ya here?”
It’s Lyle Crosby. The laughing cowboy. The last person I want to see. But I’m in a bad spot right now and can’t be too choosy about the company I keep.
Lyle’s eyes travel to my spot on the living room floor. He surprises me and cracks a gap-toothed smile, then laughs out loud. Steps inside and closes the door behind him.
“Damn, buddy. You in here fooling with yourself? Don’t be embarrassed. Half the amp teenagers end up like this at one time or another. A little bit of self-experimentation never hurt anybody, except when it did.”
Lyle chuckles at his own joke. Then he saunters around the manufactured room, his shark-black eyes mechanically taking in the wood-paneled walls and mangy La-Z-Boy recliner and particleboard bookshelves half filled with dog-eared Westerns and thick, yellowed histories of World War II.
“I’m always telling Jim he needs a wife. Look at this place. No woman I know would put up with this crap.”
Lyle grabs a
Reader’s Digest
from the coffee table and riffles the pages with the ball of his thumb. He tosses the digest on a stack ofother magazines. They collapse in a waterfall, brittle pages slapping the floor next to my face.
He snorts at the spitty snow angels I’ve been making.
“Okay. Where’s your tools, buddy?” asks Lyle.
All I can do is breathe loudly through my teeth.
“Huh,” says Lyle. He studies the area around me, thoughtfully adjusting the pod of tobacco wedged in his mouth. Eyeing me, he sucks in his bottom lip and carefully dribbles spit into the plastic bottle.
“Starting to worry me,” he says.
With the toe of his boot, he nudges me over onto my back. My arms and face are scraped up and bruised, but Lyle doesn’t seem to notice or care. Those obsidian flakes in his face are trained on what I’m still holding in my left hand.
Lyle gets very still. An unrecognizable emotion ripples across his sweat-slicked forehead. Concern. Or maybe anger. He spits again into his bottle, slow.
“That a fact?” he asks, staring pointedly at the streaks of dried blood on my temple. “Used a fuckin’ ice pick? Damn, Jack. I guess you’re not fooling around, huh? You trying to
kill
yourself?”
Not exactly.
I look up at him, focused on keeping my eyes wide open, round, and imploring.
Yeah,
my spit-smudged face says.
Yeah, I was shit-faced drunk and alone and I was angry. I thought if I turned on the Zenith I could walk outside and kick the living crap out of a guy named Billy. But it didn’t work and I messed it up bad and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I take it back, okay?
A hint of ozone sneaks into my next gulp of air. Shit. It’s been years since my last one, but you never forget the feeling of a seizure coming on. In the seconds just before, it’s easy to get fixated on little things. And this one feels like a real grand mal because I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the glint of that vodka bottle under the couch.
“I get it,” says Lyle. “Couldn’t take it no more?”
The trapped animal whimper comes out of me again and I can sense the storm gathering inside, feel the churning thunderclouds overhead sucking all the oxygen out of the air. I allow the panic into my eyes and wrench them up to meet Lyle’s dark face. In the universal language of pain I’m chanting,
Please
help
me
. Please, please, please, oh please, don’t let another one hit me.
“People been talking about you around the
Similar Books
