Wasted

It's hot as Hell and there's a guy with an awful clean hat making eyes at the waitress. He looks a fool. She don't see.

"It's a fact there's folks who nobody knows... Not just knows like knows good. I mean never even heard of, by they selves," 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 minds me having to ask. I tell him I'm sorry but I can't connect his dots all the time.

"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 to be from the first edition of the Post—and she’s got it framed. S'on a table in the back, next to the lamp, so's ev'ry time you flip on the light s'right there to be seen. She couldn't be prouder still. She says s'her way of livin’ on and don’t you dare move it or so much as even touch it. Hell, I seen her dust it and she's not one fer dusting."

I'm lost and wonder if it's the beer that done it to me. The losing. What's he carrying on about? I can't stop from grinning and feel bad because I shouldn't be. "She had the best blueberry muffins in the whole wide state of Kentucky back in '76 and that framed scrap of paper's the proof." I check the score which is little even on the big screen. I squint. We're losing and I tell myself it’s not our year. It's no wonder. They's got no heart and are spoilt worse than kids. I hear him go, "Turns out she won Best Muffin in the State Fair back then and so they put the recipe on the back page with her blessing. She didn't like givin' away a secret but said it was the only way to get in the paper so’s what she done."

This is big for him. Listen. Do right by your friend I say in my head. I look at him straight. He goes, "It's so she knows she’s been heard of. Been known. Is my point. That's her piece, you see?" His fingers are fat sausages and got a lot of hair between the knuckles on them. They get pointy on the ends. They're putting out a Marlboro.

What is? I say. He looks at me cross. People get rowdy and I figure we're losing worse.

"Keep up, boy. The dang piece of paper in that frame. The recipe. You heard me? You even listening?" I never catch him holding his glass. I only see it full on minute and empty the next.

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'n… thirty years ago." He laughs but it's no 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 a thing like this all before. He don't like it here and wishes he were somebody grander. He speaks good but can’t remember when he's drunk. I can remember but can't speak good never. "Not much to show for. Makes me sad. Don't it make you sad? A couple folks may've cut it out back then. Most of 'em went in the trash. Woman's whole life in the can.' He blows out his mouth like he's hot. 'Get this. She don't even bake 'em herself no more. She can't. Arthritis set in." He takes out his rag and wipes his face for the sweat. "And that's it all. 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'n I've got to show for. You follow? In my…" He cracks open a peanut and dumps it in his mouth. "whole rotten life I've ne'er been in the paper or radio. Don’t even bother 'bout the TV. Shit. I never so much as made it in a yearbook. School's too small fer that." I see a chewed piece of peanut hit the table and stick right where it lands from the spit."What's ever goin' to be known 'bout me?"

I say it's okay I ain’t been in nothing neither but he maybe didn't make it out. I've learnt before I'm not always talking as straight as I think I am. He's worked up somethin' fierce and I can't help him none. I close my eyes but keep on facing him square. "I dunno a single solitary thing that e'er happened in the state of Idaho fer instance. I don’t even know what you call 'em. The people from up there. Idahoers?" He laughs to his self. "The whole cursed state 'cept fer its name in yellow on every bag of taters you buy at the Piggly." He stops to  gulp down some beer. I think his timing's funny but don't let on. "Wiggly. Surely there’s got to be more goin' on 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' America, neither. I'm talking 'bout the whole wide great big world, you hear? Just think. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. All of it. All of er'ryplace else especially. What do you know of it really? I mean really know. Not the book stuff, the explosions 'n messes or fights or what not, I mean the folks and what they been through. Where they  been and what they seen with their own eyes." He turns his head and burps loud. "There's so many folks that been here we never known and never gonna know. Who they are is secrets. All the secrets inside people. I got secrets inside me nobody knows." He wipes his forehead again but with the back of this big hand. "or so much as wants to. And they do, too. The ones without names. All the kids wantin' to go their own way, have their own piece or be another one to get up on that moon—went and growed up to what? Sit behind a desk and do some measly what-have-you nonsense, messing over folk’s trifles—hangnails and such when it you get down to it. It gets me down in the dirt ev'ry 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 need to rest for a spell and get clear. Get straight. He seems hurt bad for all his fine talking. He's smarter than me. I think smarts is mostly trouble, though, so I don't mind. He's busy thinking while he works I can tell. Always off someplace else. I just stare and try not to have anything in my head but this tool or that part. I look close at things. I really feel them.

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

His eyes get bigger like he’s looking forward to biting into what I done put on his plate. He wipes his mouth way up on his forearm. His glass hasn't got a drop in it I see. "Cause it takes a weight off your shoulders is why. Don't play dumb with me. You hear me. It's what we're each of us after. Ya feel easier bein' known. You can breathe." He looks at me head on like I get him, but I don't. "Isn't that what you was after from your parents through all that cursin' and runnin' around you did way back when? Isn't that what your wifey gives you such grief fer with all her arm-crossin' and toe-tappin'? It's being known we're all of us after and I just haveta face I'm not and never goin' to. Doesn't that get you?" He knows it don't get me so I don't bother saying so. I tell him people don't ever know so much but he just frowns.  They can't so who cares.

All our Schlitz is gone somehow. Like on cue the lady with the jean skirt drops by and asks howabout another pitcher, fellas. My friend tells her of course we do. I say I'm out of cash and he waves his hand at me like it's no thing. He's sweet like that.

I swirl what's flat and warming in my glass and set to straightening out. I squint. The room isn't moving but it is to me. It's going round and round slow like. It occurs that I need a swig of water and a bit of shut-eye. But I fight it because my friend is in a bad way here before me. Pay the ball game no mind I tell myself. He's got a thorn in his side and I got to try and pick it out. I put my finger in a puddle on the bar and draw it around in circles. I hear him burp but not so loud as before. I say he's excused after he asked me to. I say he's a fine gentleman. His cheeks are rosy and look full when he smiles now. He nearly tips over reaching into his pocket. He puts money on the table so's not to forget. I'm trying hard to figure something to say.  

The pitcher returns sudsy down one side. She's all flustered. I feel bad seeing her running around crazy like she is. 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 on some of them. Then it hits me. I ask are you sad about not knowing or not being known?

He says, "Sad ain't it. I ain't sad. I'm mad," which he makes look 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 hear are, "Mostly being known I guess. I'm old and got hardly nothin' left. I'm all dried up and have nothin' to show fer it and never are gonna have. Nobody gives me a second look." He tugs hard on his beard. I think I see a hair float down until I lose it in the shadows of his shirt. "I'm just like ev'rybody else. Ev'rybody else that I never known and can't ever get to."

He looks more sad than mad to me. He's said this mess here before more or less. We been friends a long while. I knew him before he was married and divorced and even before tried his luck selling junk for a spell. Now he's drinking his next beer. I'm piecing words together careful. I feel on to something and try to concentrate. I stare into the corner. I'm thinking hard of how to tell him what I see's really wrong here. I want to tell him why it's not such a mess. No such thing as secrets really. We're all of us known according to the preacher. I nearly fall over on account of watching the ceiling fan spin. My stomach ain't right. It gets in the way. I say water aloud to no one in particular. I miss my chance. He starts up talking again and I feel trapped. All I can muster is stuck inside my sloppy head. I want to be sober so I can be a good friend. I don't want smarts but only some way to get him calmed down.

There's a racket nearby that gives me a start. Someone yells son of a bitch and slams a heavy thing on the bar. Everyone else gets real quiet and turns to see. We feel better when we see it's just a big glass with a handle on it.  

I want water but louder and the waitress hears me and asks what's this fuss about. "There's no fuss, ma'am. My friend here just is thirsty and can't take no more booze." He's right. She comes back with a glass clear full. I slur my thanks a little but she smiles all the same. 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 front legs together. It's greedy. They're excited about filth. They can't leave it be. Why come they don't get sick? The natives start in yelling at the TV and my friend's gone quiet. He crumples his Marlboro into the ashtray and the rest of the smoke comes out his nose. 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 in my head 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 cayenne pepper hot. To allay me, 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 admit to write 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 put postage 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 found 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 discourage 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 tone 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.