father’s wheelchair, a dark purple motorized job with fat whitewalls and an American flag decal stuck to the back. “The Beast,” Billy’s sister Kathryn called it, a flanged and humpbacked ride with all the grace of a tar cooker or giant dung beetle. “Damn thing gives me the willies,” she confessed to Billy, and Ray’s aggressive style of driving did in fact seem to strive for maximum creep effect. Whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, he buzzed to the kitchen for his morning coffee, then whhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrrr into the den for the day’s first hit of nicotine and Fox News, then whhhhhhhiiiiiirrrrrr back to the kitchen for his breakfast, whhhhhiiiiirrrrrr to the bathroom, whhhhhhiiiiirrrrrr to the den and the blathering TV, whhhhhhiiiiirrrrrr, whhhhhiiiiiiirrrrr, whhhhhhiiiiiiirrrrrrr, he jammed the joystick so hard around its vulcanized socket that the motor keened like a tattoo drill, the piercing eeeeeeennnnnhhhhhh contrapuntaling off the baseline whhhhiiiiirrrrrrrr to capture in sound, in stereophonic chorus no less, the very essence of the man’s personality.
“He’s an asshole,” Kathryn said.
To which Billy: “You just now figured that out?”
“Shut up. What I mean is he likes being an asshole, he enjoys it. Some people you get the feeling they can’t help it? But he works at it. He’s what you’d call a proactive asshole.”
“What does he do?”
“Nothing! That’s my whole point, doesn’t do shit! Won’t do his physical therapy, never goes out, just sits in that damn chair all day watching Fox and listening to fat-ass Rush Limbaugh, won’t even talk unless he wants something, and then he just grunts. Expects us to wait on him hand and foot.”
“So don’t do it.”
“I don’t! But then it all falls on Mom and she wears herself out and I’m like, Okay, whatever, I’m in. As long as I’m living here I might as well be part of the problem.”
Somewhere in the house there’s a trunk full of glossy promotional photos of rock and metal bands from the seventies, eighties, and into the nineties, “the mullet years” as Kathryn has tagged that primitive era, most of these bands long forgotten and mercifully so, though Ray’s collection does contain a few bona fide stars. Meat Loaf. .38 Special. Kansas. The Allman Brothers. Proximity to talent as well as the empire of his own considerable ego propelled Ray to a minor local stardom all his own, and while the pop music juggernaut of love, lust, and endless adolescence powers on and on, it endures without the oral gifts of Rockin’ Ray Lynn, who in the 9-11 climate of recessive economics found himself out on his downsized and too-old ass. We love ya, big guy, but you’re gone. And all those years he’d kept apartments in Dallas and Fort Worth, that era came to a sputtering and ignominious end too, though he was plotting his comeback in between the odd jobs that came his way, emceeing local beauty pageants and Rotary Club banquets, “monkey gigs” he called them in the bitter, waspish voice he used at home, the one best suited to his default settings of contempt, sarcasm, and general hatefulness. The way he could switch from that to his professional voice was something to see, a kind of ventriloquist’s trick, no dummy necessary. He’d be berating you for, say, failing to lather the tires with sufficient Armor All to achieve that lustrous showroom shine, and in the midst of his ruptured sewer line of fucks and damns and worthless-piece-of-shits his cell would ring and it was like a switch flipped, all at once he was the hip, happy voice of ten thousand drive-times and the perennial metro-area Arbitron champ.
Billy hated that. Not just the lie of it but the affront to nature, like someone’s head changing shape right before your eyes. But the comeback. That was his mission. Through research Ray concluded that the market could support yet one more aggrieved white male defending faith and flag from America’s heartland. He studied the masters,
“He’s an asshole,” Kathryn said.
To which Billy: “You just now figured that out?”
“Shut up. What I mean is he likes being an asshole, he enjoys it. Some people you get the feeling they can’t help it? But he works at it. He’s what you’d call a proactive asshole.”
“What does he do?”
“Nothing! That’s my whole point, doesn’t do shit! Won’t do his physical therapy, never goes out, just sits in that damn chair all day watching Fox and listening to fat-ass Rush Limbaugh, won’t even talk unless he wants something, and then he just grunts. Expects us to wait on him hand and foot.”
“So don’t do it.”
“I don’t! But then it all falls on Mom and she wears herself out and I’m like, Okay, whatever, I’m in. As long as I’m living here I might as well be part of the problem.”
Somewhere in the house there’s a trunk full of glossy promotional photos of rock and metal bands from the seventies, eighties, and into the nineties, “the mullet years” as Kathryn has tagged that primitive era, most of these bands long forgotten and mercifully so, though Ray’s collection does contain a few bona fide stars. Meat Loaf. .38 Special. Kansas. The Allman Brothers. Proximity to talent as well as the empire of his own considerable ego propelled Ray to a minor local stardom all his own, and while the pop music juggernaut of love, lust, and endless adolescence powers on and on, it endures without the oral gifts of Rockin’ Ray Lynn, who in the 9-11 climate of recessive economics found himself out on his downsized and too-old ass. We love ya, big guy, but you’re gone. And all those years he’d kept apartments in Dallas and Fort Worth, that era came to a sputtering and ignominious end too, though he was plotting his comeback in between the odd jobs that came his way, emceeing local beauty pageants and Rotary Club banquets, “monkey gigs” he called them in the bitter, waspish voice he used at home, the one best suited to his default settings of contempt, sarcasm, and general hatefulness. The way he could switch from that to his professional voice was something to see, a kind of ventriloquist’s trick, no dummy necessary. He’d be berating you for, say, failing to lather the tires with sufficient Armor All to achieve that lustrous showroom shine, and in the midst of his ruptured sewer line of fucks and damns and worthless-piece-of-shits his cell would ring and it was like a switch flipped, all at once he was the hip, happy voice of ten thousand drive-times and the perennial metro-area Arbitron champ.
Billy hated that. Not just the lie of it but the affront to nature, like someone’s head changing shape right before your eyes. But the comeback. That was his mission. Through research Ray concluded that the market could support yet one more aggrieved white male defending faith and flag from America’s heartland. He studied the masters,
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