Wasted

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

It's hot and there's a guy with an awful clean hat making eyes at the waitress. He looks foolish. 'There's people who nobody knows. Not knows. I mean never even heard of,' my friend says to me after I've had my fifth or sixth. This comes out of nowhere so I ask him, 'what?' I can see he doesn't like me having to ask. I tell him I'm sorry but I can't always connect his dots.

'My ma's got this little piece of the newspaper,' and he holds up his hand to show me the square like he’s fixing to take my picture, '-looks like it's from the first edition of the Post—and she’s got it framed. S'on the desk in the back, next to the lamp, so's ev'ry time you flip on the light it’s right there to be seen. She says it’s her way of livin’ on and don’t you dare move it or so much as touch it. I seen her dust it and she doesn’t care for dusting.’

I'm lost and wonder if it's the beer. Did I miss something? I can't stop from grinning and feel bad for it. 'She had the best blueberry muffins in the whole wide state of Kentucky back in 76 and that paper's the proof.' I check the score which is small even on the big screen. I stare. We're losing and I tell myself it’s not our year. They have no heart and are spoiled worse than kids. I hear him go, 'She won best muffin in the State Fair back then and so they put the recipe in there with her permission. She didn't like givin' it away but said it was the only way to get in the paper so it’s what she did.’

This is big for him. Do right by your friend I say in my head. I look at him straight. 'It's so she knows she’s been heard of. Known.' His hands are fat and have a lot of hair between the knuckles. His fingers are pointy on the ends. They're putting out a Marlboro.

'What is?' I say. He gives me a cross look. People get loud and I figure we are losing more.

'Keep up, boy. The piece of paper in that frame. The recipe. You heard me?' I never catch him touching his glass. I only see it full and empty.

Right I say and shake off the cobwebs.

'But that’s all she’n ever done. A little somethin' on the back page of the local section—about three inches square—more than… thirty years ago.' He laughs but not at a joke. 'That takes all. That's her whole deal in a teeny square. All her life. I seen it the other day and it got to me.' I've heard him say this all before. He doesn't like it here and wishes he were somebody else. He speaks good but can’t remember when he's drunk. I can remember but can't speak good. 'Not much to show for. Makes me sad. Some others cut it out back then. Most of 'em went in the trash. She don't even bake 'em herself anymore. Arthritis.' He takes out his rag to dry his face off because of the sweat. 'And that's it. That’s her part. What she’s gonna keep givin' to posterity.' My head gets real heavy all of a sudden and I nod.

'And that's more than I've got to show for it. In my…' He cracks open a peanut and dumps it in his mouth. 'whole life I've ne'er been in the paper or radio. Don’t even bother 'bout the TV.' I see a piece of peanut hit the table and stick.

I tell him I haven’t been either but he maybe didn't make it out. I learned before I'm not always talking as clear as I think I am. He's worked up and I can't help. I close my eyes but face him still. 'I dunno a single solitary thing that ever happened in the state of Idaho. I don’t even know what you call 'em. The people from there. Idahoers? The whole cursed state 'cept for its name in yellow on every bag of taters you buy at the Piggly.' He's quiet except for the gulping. I think it's funny timing but don't let on. 'Wiggly. Surely there’s been more that happened there than some spuds getting picked. Nothing wrong with picking taters. Not what I mean…' The table rocks and I look to see he’s leaning heavy on it. 'And I'm not just talkin' 'Merica, neither. I'm talking 'bout the whole wide great big world, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. All of it. The rest of it especially. What do you know of it really? Not the book stuff, the explosions 'n messes or fights, I mean the people and what they been through. Where they been. There's so many people that been here we never known and never gonna know. All the secrets inside people. I got secrets inside nobody knows or wants to. And they do, too. All the kids wantin' to go their own way, have their own piece or be another one to get up on the moon, growed up to sit behind a desk and think about other people’s little trifles—the sortsa things hangnails are but because it's on some big shot’s hand it needs special care. It gets me down in the dirt every time.' He pours himself another.

My head's spinning and I’m struggling to follow his drift. He's been blowing in a great many directions. I want to lie down and rest for a spell. He seems hurt bad for all his fine talking. He is smarter than me. I think smarts is mostly trouble. He's busy thinking while he works I can tell. I just stare and try not to. I look close at things. I really feel them.

'Why's bein' known sucha thing?' I say. There's cotton on my tongue and I'm scared I’m talking funny.

His eyes get bigger like he’s looking forward to biting into what I served. He wipes his mouth way up on his forearm. His glass hasn't a drop in it again. 'Cause it takes a weight off your shoulders. Ya feel easier bein' known. You can breathe.' He looks at me like I get him, but I don't. 'Isn't that what you wanted from your parents through all that cursin' and rebelling you did way back when? Isn't that what your wifey gives you such grief for with all her arm-crossin' and toe-tapping? It's being known we're after and I just haveta face I'm a not and never goin' to. Doesn't that make you mad?' He knows I'm not mad about it so I don't bother. I tell him people don't know so much but he just frowns.

The rest of our Schlitz is gone somehow. Like on cue the lady with the jean skirt shows up and asks about another pitcher. My friend takes it to be an instance of mind-reading and cannot resist the offer. I tell him I'm out of cash and he waves his hand at me like it's nothing. He's nice like that.

I swirl what's flat and warming in my glass and try to straighten out. The room is not moving but it is to me. I think that I need a swig of water and a little shut-eye. But I fight it because my friend is in a bad way and will pay the ball game no mind. He has a point and I got to round it off I tell myself. I put my finger in a puddle on the bar and trace it around in circles. I hear him burp a little. I laugh and excuse him because he asked me to. I tell him he's a gentleman. His cheeks are rosy and look marshmallow-filled when he smiles now. He nearly tips over reaching into his pocket but he's still all-there up top. He puts money on the table so's not to forget. I'm trying hard to find something to say.

The pitcher returns sudsy down one side. She's in a hurry. I feel bad for her. Her legs don't look so hot but she's trying to make them work for her. There's a squiggly tattoo down her calf that makes it look lumpy. I think of mashed potatoes and want salt on my tongue very badly. Peanuts are nearby. I settle. Then it hits me. 'Are you sad about not knowing or not being known?'

He says, 'I'm not sad. I'm mad,’ which he makes pretty with the flick of his lighter mixed in. The cigarette waggles between his lips and looks like its scribbling a message in the air. I lose what I was going to say. The next words I get are, 'mostly being known I guess. I'm old and got nothin' left. I'm all dried up and have nothing to show for it and never are gonna have. Nobody looks at me.' He tugs hard on his beard. I think I see a hair fall down until I lose it in the shadows of his shirt. 'I'm just like everybody else. Everybody else that I’ve never known and can't.'

He looks more sad than mad. He's said most of this before. We’ve been friends a long while. I knew him before he was married and divorced and even before tried his luck selling. He's drinking. I'm putting words together carefully. I feel on to something and try to concentrate. I stare into the corner. I'm thinking hard of how to tell him what's really wrong here. I want to tell him why it's not such a mess. No such thing as secrets really. I nearly fall over watching the ceiling fan spin. My stomach isn't right. It gets in the way. I say 'water' to no one in particular. I miss my chance. He starts up talking again and I feel trapped. All I can muster is in my stuck inside my sloppy head. I want to be sober so that I can be a good friend. I don't want smarts but only some way to calm him down.

There's a racket nearby that gives me a start. Someone yells 'To hell with it!' and slams something heavy on the bar. Everyone else gets quiet and turns to see. We feel better when we see it's just one of those glasses with a handle.

I want water but louder and the waitress hears and asks about the fuss. 'There's no fuss. My friend here just is thirsty and needs no more booze.' He's right. She comes back. I slur my thanks a little but she smiles. She knows what I mean. The water goes quick.

A fly hops along the rim of our half-filled pitcher. I can see it rubbing its hands together. It's greedy. They're excited about dirt. They can't leave it be. Do they get sick? The natives start in yelling at the TV and my friend's gone quiet. He crumples his Marlboro into the ashtray and blows out what left in him fast. He says we should get going and I nod. I say sorry as I get up wobbly.

Memoir of a Pseudo-Amnesiac: 4

As it so happened, he was wrong on one account. She was interested and she went looking for me. (Proving once more that good things come to those who wait and that luck is not made despite the egotists who insist upon the contrary.) I was found milling around my school’s fenced perimeter, hammering out the kinks of a thesis on Skinner. I did not notice her coming as I was gazing intently on the ground slightly before my feet. “You didn’t tell me your name,” was uttered without origin. Startled, I erupted with an expletive. She laughed. When I realized who had spoken, I begged her pardon. She was cucumber cool and I was pepper hot. She observed my reflexes were stellar and that keyed-up animals live longer in the wild. The natural color returned to my ears attested to subjectively by a lack of heat in that region. We exchanged pleasantries, dealing in large part with what was new in our lives. (Although neither of us knew what was “old” for the other, it is not what one asks about). Near the end of our jaunt and at her behest, we exchanged mailing addresses rather than numbers. (Hers was one of those bumpkinny addresses—numbers followed by indecipherable abbreviations followed by still more numbers—with an air of encryption about it.) It struck me as quaint and entirely fitting the unspoken code of courtship I assumed presided over inter-gender affairs in Pike County. I was thrilled and aghast—thrilled to be pursued and aghast at the necessity of requital. I insisted she write first so that I could operate within the confines of tone she established.

Her cursive handwriting was graceful and slightly disorienting. (Longhand is alive and well in needle-point country.) It made me ashamed of my chicken-scratch script and I committed to writing more deliberately thereafter. The first twenty lines consisted of preliminary getting-to-know-you questions like point of birth to be gotten out of the way and stored for future reference. Beneath them was a set of three essay questions from which to choose one, none of which were especially personal. (This was a good-natured exercise and designed, presumably, to either pander to one of my strengths or speak in terms an undergrad could understand.) I wrote on “What’s wrong with us and why? Give concrete examples.” and made a convincing argument in 500 words or less for the dilutive ramifications of data influx on us progeny of the Information Age. After three drafts and many a minute of tapping pen-to-lip, I reciprocated with a quiz of my own. I dittoed the twenty questions* and formulated a biographical inquiry. (‘Is your father always so intimidating? If so, why? If not, when not?’ ‘What do you appreciate the most about living here and what could you do without?’, and ‘What’s on your mind when business at the produce stand is slow?’) She picked #2. What she appreciated most and least were the two sides of the same coin of time. The surfeit of leisure afforded by inclement weather or the cold season was a situationally-dependent blessing or curse.

We kept the pen-pal relationship going in part because we couldn’t see each other constantly. I had school and she had a considerable set of filial duties. Plus, neither of us wanted to be the one to blame for dropping the ball, letter-wise. They became supplementary material to our face-to-face visits and hastened our introductory phase tremendously. We never spent a dime on postage. Instead, we exchanged the notes at the outset of our sessions and tucked them away in hip-or-back pocket to be read later. At some point, we started folding them into exceedingly small rectangles and devised ways of slipping them to each other in homage to mafia movies. Who began this ritual I cannot say.

She met me more than halfway since I was functionally a pedestrian. (Car repairs were not easy to come by in those parts and I, not trusting my mechanically-inclined colleagues, opted to let my Civic languish until my parents caved into desperation and had it towed.) She had access to an ancient F-100 with two gas tanks, which came in handy since there were two trips: one to and one from campus. (This is hyperbole, but not outrageously so. The truck lumbered along at 7 MPG thanks to being engineered in the good old days of cheap crude. The cargo of cement blocks which was the stuff of an often promised but never realized retaining wall at the Benson Farm did nothing for efficiency either.) The exterior was burnt orange and gold with pitted and speckled chrome bumpers. From inside, you could watch the road speed by through a growing hole in the passenger side floor board (which, I warned, was destined to become a real problem for spare change or an ill-fated cell phone). The miniscule maroon waffle texture of the bench seat’s cloth made me nostalgic for a decade when “greaser” was a caste. In lieu of air conditioning were triangular windows that pivoted on an axis and scooped up passing air at a rate that made your jowls jiggle wind tunnel-like at interstate speeds. The truck was the sort of temperamental jalopy that begged for a name. The passenger needed to be slightly ajar in order for the engine to turn over. The windshield wipers did not function without the cigarette lighter being depressed. I enjoyed these eccentricities and became more partial to it than a person should be to an artifact.

We took a lot of walks together, regardless of the season. They were our dates and my exercise. Walking is an act of penance for the consumption of rural cuisine. (Pies were as much a fixture of the dinner table as forks and knives.) Either we walked the lengths of First through Fourth Street until civilization disappeared or devolved into boarded-up houses or we strode down Route 3 until one of our sets of legs began to throb. There was a lot of pointing on these jaunts. We liked seeing the same sights.

Provided I was wearing tall enough socks, we occasionally made excursions into the family’s farmland. At dusk in the summer, you could not have a conversation over the ambulancean wail of the cicadas and katydids. An array of flora and fauna stuck to whatever cloth brushed against the tall grasses and weeds. On return, we’d retire to separate unoccupied rooms to modestly inspect for ticks scrambling towards nether regions. (This in itself shows how far I had come to making peace with nature because of her.) Once cleared by private scrutiny, we presented bare backs to each other for visual inspection of those hard to reach places. This practice was for novices like myself an emulsion of sensual and repulsive emotions. In the end, the sensual rose to the top. Removing parasites is a work of affection. (See generally: primate behavior).

This continued for months. I did not quickly ask her out (which is a phrase I’d like to avoid since “out” always struck me as a vacuous place, but is the only real prospect that fits the bill). To me, the categorization was superfluous. Giving something an official name aspired to nothing more than discouraging others from transgressing against it, not because of authentic care but authoritative diffidence. (This is why security cameras are more affective at deterring than no trespassing signs.) Principal stance aside, I did not want to rock the boat and was frightened any shift in status might land me in the sea. To her—I later learned—it was a great disappointment and a sign I was not simply bashful but altogether spineless when it counted. She had to ward off passive aggressive attacks from her ill mother nightly on account of my reticence.

I don’t know what attracted her to me. It was not charm or mysteriousness and, despite her flattery, it was not looks. (I am to Adonis what yellow is to Tuesday.) At the time, I thought it was a certain je ne sais quoi radiating from my indefatigable candor and earnestness (a trait which I both staunchly believed I possessed and completely lacked given my self-referential obliviousness). What attracted me to her is too long a list to enumerate here. Being around her was like looking at a diamond. I felt a multifaceted sentiment around her. Firstly, there was the novelty of it all. I was not one to garner attention and if I accidently happened to, I could not keep it. She was, as I have already mentioned, physically attractive and seeing her sparked textbook arousal responses. She was smart to boot and a straight-arrow, morally speaking. Exhibit A: She had been letting her hair grow out in the fall. When she exited the truck, I noted it flipped playfully above her ears. I complimented her on this, thinking it was intentionally styled. She told me to kiss off without making eye contact. Before I could be fully offended by this outburst and counter with some barb to make the situation worse, she apologized. Apologizing was easy for her, not because she had a lot of practice, but because she indulged in no delusions about what she did and was capable of. I have never met a more sober thinker. I don’t know if it was the Bible, the cows, or the lack of any sort of pollution—whatever the source, she never hid anything from anyone, including herself. It was as though the lack of pre-processed input kept her head from getting clogged up with excuses or falsehoods. She knew she was disappointed with her appearance, that she snapped at me, and that she shouldn’t have snapped at me. So she apologized.

I do not mince words. I do not say I love pasta or some much-lauded band because I don’t consider them objects of such momentous affection. I do not respond “good” or the grammatically preferable “well” when someone asks me how I am because I am almost always “fine” or worse. To be well is a rarified state of happiness/contentment/peace I am not often in. I was happy then in those first few months. I was happy to be near her, happy to see her walk towards me, happy to hear her recollections of Indian summers and creek beds and crawdads squirting backwards in crystal clear water. It was magical, not in the incredulous way a skeptic describes a conviction, but in the way a child knows fireflies—an ineffable glow both real and uncanny.

__________
* Her answers were: 1) Allison Benson, 2) 10/14/87, 3) Salina, KS, 4) 2 – Donnie (older) and Jimmy (younger), 5) Yellow, 6) grandma’s corn pudding, 7) strawberry mint sun tea, 8) lately Franny and Zooey, 9) I don’t watch much TV, 10) That’s difficult. Pet Sounds was my first –how about that? 11) Am I a sap if I say Shawshank Redemption? 12) Flint Hills, 13) no one, really, 14) yes, 15) not like Casper, no 16) when you said your name was Shit 17) when Pappy (my grandfather) died, 18) flying by a mile—what good is invisibility really? 19) Italy or Australia, 20) both half-full and half-empty if we are going to be accurate about it.