Creative Writers
2001
Barnes & Nobles
Wilmington, Delaware
Joe Pokatsch, Editor
Another hot summer night in too many hot summer nights. The sky was a dark bruise. Storms threatened, but had for a week and no rain came. Heat lightening crackled to the east. There was no rain in that; just flashes causing field fires out on the farm line. Thunder covered all other sounds. Sonny was driving away from his two-bedroom trailer, cinder-blocked in permanence along 40-Acres Lane six miles and a spit south of Pansville. These were the last savage acres in the county, full of nothing but overgrowth and dirt bike trails.
He broke the wood line and flashed through crossroad villages along Pansville Pike heading north; one, two, three little clots of houses, a gas station, a store and up the curvy hill around the old slaughterhouse, past the high school on the hill and back into another stretch of nothing much. He was thirsty, dry as the road dust beneath his tires, all the water sweated out of him earlier. He pulled off the pike onto the gravel lot at the Old German’s Tavern.
He parked and eyeballed the revolver lying on the passenger seat. He pondered it as if it had been flung there when he wasn’t looking, decided it was best not to leave it in plain view and stuck it in the glove compartment.
Stepping out of the car he was seared by heat that would burn an iron. “Too many hot days,” he thought.
Inside the tavern, lit by blue and red neon from beer signs, was the damp cool of a rock cavern. The Old German had the air conditioner jacked. Sonny’s wet forehead went cold. He found an empty chair at a corner table and sat down heavy. At the bar three men sat drinking dark beer from thick mugs.
The Old German himself ambled over. “Beer?” he asked in a broken rasp over some distant accent. The Old German had a jagged scar down his cheek and across his jaw, and a blue tattoo on his upper arm too faint in the bar-hazy light to read. Another survivor.
“Whiskey neat,” said Sonny.
He looked at the other men. Knew them all and all his life. Weren’t they all beat to hell? Wasn’t one of them over forty. Wasn’t one of them ever been to war, but each looked like the losing side in a pirate movie. Chucko Moyer had a missing ear, bitten off at fourteen by a horse he was currying. Lester Witlach smiled through broken teeth from a mule kick and listed to starboard on half a foot, the toes chopped off in a hay bailer, symbols and signs of the farming life.
Sonny had a quarter-inch wide, liver-red scar snaking down his arm from bicep to wrist bone. It’d been shattered by a tire rim blown off his eighteen wheeler six years back and it was merciful he got his arm up to deflect the blow or it’d been his head sailing off into the weeds with the rim.
The other man at the bar was Brook Huzzard, who looked normal and untouched in the neon glow, except Sonny knew he had a glass eye, an irony of happenstance as it turned out. If you looked close you’d see that eye glinting brighter than the good one.
The Old German set the shot before him. Sonny snatched it up and drained it. It stung his stomach same as if he’d swallowed a hornet. He waved the empty glass at the barkeep.
“Gott almighty, Sonny, you vant the damn bottle?”
Sonny smiled. “Just another shot. But keep me in your crosshairs.”
“’Nother beer while y’re at it,” said Brook.”
Brook took a stare across at Sonny, his face blank.
The Old German returned with Sonny’s shot and set it on the table. Sonny picked it up between finger and thumb. He raised it toward Brook, said, “to Pammy”.
Brook nodded and turned his attention back to the bar.
Pammy should have been Brook’s. Should a been, could a been, would a been. Would have been Brook’s wife once a time, but wasn’t. Brook and Pammy had been sweethearts through high school, cutest couple in the yearbook. Ah, Brook and Pammy sittin’ in a tree… and Sonny had been the friend lusting in his dreams.
Then Brook wouldn’t fly with her at the throttle and that pissed her and Sonny got his opening and jumped over that cliff feet first. Never understood Brook. Just stubbornness in the guy. Never broke up the friendship though Brook never quite got over Pammy. And Sonny never forgave fate.
New roads taken because bull-headed Brook wouldn’t fly with her at the stick, 'cause he was a flyer too and too cock-of-the-wall arrogant to let someone else sit in the pilot seat. Well, that glass eye changed that, didn’t it? Took that joystick out of his hand for good. Brook went a bit somber and solitary after his accident.
It’d been up in those rot damn angry woods. Cursed woods for certain. Right after Sonny took to the air with Pammy, Brook hit out hunting alone and in a huff, armed with a 65-pound pull bow and bobtailed arrows. Drove off the pike up an old bike trail to the High-Point fire tower near Long Silver Lake campground on Black Oak Hill. Left the car and hiked back two miles into the scruff. Snagged a downed tree branch and snapped the line and had to re-string. Had the bow braced on his instep wrong side out, leaning his weight down to hook the string. When he released somehow the new string whipped off the notch and slashed his left eyeball down the middle.
Had to give Brook a gold star for guts. Hiked back to his car holding the gush in with one hand and drove the eight miles into the Pansville emergency ward. Didn’t have any other choice, of course. Didn’t have cell phones back then. Could have pulled into the first house in the first village, but there was that stubbornness again. Walked into the hospital and said, “I got a little problem here.” Too late for the eye, it was just pulp.
Ruined Brook’s flyboy plans. Lost himself Pammy in the bargain. Even with that, he wouldn’t fly with her. What could he expect snubbing her passion, refusing to share it.
Sonny had the hots for her all along. She was small, not five foot high, shining round face, always smiling, always showing dimples in her cheeks and flashing green eyes like starter blinkers. She had a bounce when she walked and she was soft and warm to hold onto, and light enough to swing about. When Brook said he wasn’t flying and she looked at Sonny and said, “How ‘bout you?” she didn’t have to ask twice.
Twenty-one years ago.
Stuff can happen in twenty-one years turns a young man old and sour.
Sonny pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket and lit up. The smoke rose in thin wisps across the blue glow of the neon.
It resembled the clouds drifting high in smoky wisps across the blue sky as the little plane went up at forty-five degrees pressing him backward. His hands had gripped the front of the seat, knuckles tight and white. The radio stuttered a stream of words, none of which he could make out over static. Pammy had tilted the plane left and they swooped the airport on the rise, then at altitude straightened and followed the Old Pansville Pike south, the highway tossed out below, white and long and full of loops and curves. It was quick time out of Pansville. The houses and farm pastures dissolved leaving them hovering that damn haunted forest. Nothing but tree tops and that twisting piece of highway rope below; nothing but sky above. He had eased upright in his seat, but his knuckles stayed white. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to look. Straight ahead, looking around Pammy’s brown hair, he could see the blur of the prop, a wavering line, more like heat waves wiggling off hot concrete. Looking up made him sick. Looking straight down he could see the black donut of a wheel jutting out over nothing and that made his head spin. Looking off to the distance worked for him, that was where he looked.
Twenty minutes out, steady br-r-r br-r-r br-r-r of an engine till one didn’t even hear it anymore. She threw the plane into a one-eighty. She dipped a wing sharply and took the turn too tight. Sonny saw a black curtain slip over his eyes, but he willed himself out of the faint. The turn tossed him over against the side of the fuselage, pressed his face right against the window. Up front were excited curses, Pammy flipping switches, pulling levers, jumping about like her shorts pinched tender spots. Beyond her he saw the prop clear and straight.
Out the window trees were everywhere and reaching, spiking up from the ground with leafy hands for the plane. He had gazed forward again and the dials were spinning. He saw the airspeed racing higher. The altimeter dropping. And he could still see the damn prop, a clear yellow straight-up stick.
Somehow she had gotten the engine firing again and the plane eased level and in a few minutes they were back on the Pansville runway, safe and sound. Pammy opened the door and threw up over the tarmac. But next weekend, they were flying north over another woods. Pammy just had this adventurous spirit.
New whiskey arrived. Sonny ran a finger around the rim
“How’s Pammy?” asked Brook without a movement in his body, without turning around.
“Pammy ain’t gittin’ round much right now.”
“Damn shame,” put in Lester. “She had spirit, that one.”
“You know what that got her,” Sonny said. He drained the whiskey and waved for another.
Lester grunted. Chucko nodded. Brook didn’t move. Sitting there thinking how he lucked out, was what Sonny bet.
Sonny and Pammy got married the year after the near air crash. Sonny left the family farm and started driving for McClury Transport, hauling up the turnpike to Pittsburgh twice weekly. Driving early day to late night to make schedule, popping bennies to keep awake, banging Pammy whenever home, flying on Saturdays and riding hogs on Sunday, was his life. Over and over and never feeling stuck. Felt free, always moving somewhere even if it was the same place as the day before, and feeling the caress and kiss of the winds of freedom.
Maybe it was his time on the road kept the fire burning, but most those years they couldn’t look at each other with out getting horny, their sap running like the whole year was spring and she was in constant heat. Never struck nuggets in the mine, though. All that bedtime and never got pregnant. Must have been something wrong with one or the other of them, but it all worked for the best he guessed. Kid would have been a real complication in the end.
Twenty years of marriage, fifteen of the best years of his life. Hey, what’s the joke? Fifteen outta twenty ain’t a bad average.
“Whiskey,” he called.
The three men at the bar looked at him. He had been a bit loud. The Old German trotted over and set a half-empty bottle on the table.
“Here. Save you money, save me steps.”
Sonny smiled limply. “It’s my anniversary. You know that?”
“Vhat? Anniversary?”
“Twentieth wedding anniversary today.”
“Vell, vhy you ain’t home givin’ a shot to the happy bride ‘stead a sittin’ here gettin’ blotto?”
Sonny gave a bitter laugh.
Brook looked over and Sonny could see that one eye bulge out.
Sonny poured another shot and Brook turned back to whatever conversation he was having with the other two. Brook wasn’t in the picture five years ago at all. Brook was off somewhere, one of his interminable hunting trips to the far corners of these great states. Pammy and Sonny were heading out on a Saturday night, a clear and stinking hot summer night much like tonight’s. They each had their own Harley because she loved pushing a hog almost as much as flying, and they were going to a biker blowout in New York State. Road was dry and clear, wasn’t any traffic for long stretches, just a breeze of a throughway right up to the Poconos, where the deer were. Never expected the deer. Saw them grazing along the highway, must have been a herd. Pammy saw them first and pointed them out, one hand on the handlebar, the other straight out. Sonny looked to where she gestured and that was when she hit the can. Some old soup can rolling across the macadam in the hot wind that she didn’t see and she caught it with the front wheel, enough of a jar that the bike wobbled and she grabbed back with her loose hand too quick and the bike went over and slid forever down the highway and into a road sign.
She didn’t have a helmet, didn’t have leathers. Too hot for all that heavy stuff. Tore hell out of one side, took skin and cloth down her arm and leg, shattered bones in both. Her head scraped along for a while and he saw the tear, the cheek ripped to bacon, the head split just off the eyebrow, the eye socket a pool of blood. There were bits and pieces of her along the track. Some hair was caught in the bushes beyond the sign where it had blown after the highway pulled it out.
The rest of that day was a blur he couldn’t clear up no matter how much he fiddled the dial. She was alive. Someone came along. A cop came. An ambulance came and took her.
Most of that year was in and out of the hospital, in and out of the clinic, in and out of the doctor’s office, a year of splints, casts and bandages, of skin grafts, of learning to walk and talk again. She never got a glass eye. Something about the ocular muscle damage, the shattered socket. She wore a black eye patch thereafter.
After they took off all the patches and bailing wire that kept her parts where they belonged until they could hold themselves in place, he still had to help her eat and bathe and go to the bathroom. She gradually got to walking with the aid of a cane, but she had no sense of direction and he had to watch she didn’t wander off absently into traffic. Moving to the trailer up in the haunted woods kept her safe from whizzing cars, but he had to be on constant guard for where she was. He couldn’t let her shuffle off into the woods and get lost. When that road took her skin and hair and bone, it sucked out bits of brain as well and she couldn’t remember things. She didn’t know what happened to her. She couldn’t remember ever flying. She didn’t know what love was and couldn’t do the act.
But he knew what love was as he protected her, combing her hair of tangles, cleaning what ever seeped down her legs, dressing her in fresh clothes several times a day, learning to cook and spooning her meals to her before he ate. He gave up trucking and cut firewood out of the woods, took up doing small repairs, any little thing somebody would pay for as long it kept him at home where he could watch over her. All the last four years, after the doctor’s turned her back to him, he had guarded and cared for and held Pammy against the terrors that came in her sleep. He figured she revisited the accident in every dream. She would awake screaming and shaking and lost in the dark. Or maybe in her dreams she saw the skies she couldn’t sail.
Sonny tilted the whiskey bottle over the glass and a few drops driveled out and missed, spilling in little bubbles upon the table. He walked to the bar and motioned to the Old German. He paid his tab, patted Brook upon the back and left the chill of the tavern for the sizzle of the late summer air. With all the drink, he had no buzz. He walked steady and straight to his car. He slid in and shut the door.
He thought of Brook, knew that Brook never in the briefest moment or the breadth of his life touched the depth of true love and probably never would. Should a have, could a have, but never would have what Sonny knew about the depths of true love.
He turned the key. He tuned a rock station loud on the radio and opened the glove compartment. The revolver skidded out on the lid. Sonny lifted the gun. He hefted its weight and balance in his hand and placed the barrel to his temple. For the second time that day he pulled the trigger.
L. E. Meredith © 2008
0 comments:
Post a Comment