FOUR RIPPED FROM LIFE |
by Trey Moore |
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Day of QuestionsPreviously a tire shopa converted kiosk in the middle of a parking lot has the best potato and egg tacos on Marbach. It sounds simple. The waitress is from Saltillo.“Where’d you get the walking stick?” I ask.“Disneyland This place called Africa. The cooks, the waitresses, everyone works for the sign Taqueria de Saltillo. In a vacant store front window a white candle burns in Mexico. The streets lonesome of some voices. The candle burns for sons and daughters. Burns for their safety. Their refuge. Their home. Their coming. Their journey. The waitress interrupts, “Sir, can I take your order?" The waitress smiles so big“Yes, give me your number girl?” he’s smiling I’m smiling she offers a polite silence not her number. The waitress returns to the kitchen.“Allright I mess you all up, right, I did. (“Yes” implies a false finality his deeply locked eyes, the secret. We all fight this“Well yes,” he says, “yes.”“You divorced?” I ask. desperate loneliness. An empty stomach. A meal eaten, one plate. One glass. The company of knife and fork. Nobody forgets any of the touching. We were heroes of making due, getting by, picking up and moving on. What was left behind, filled novels and boxes. It was in the cracked sky the clear eyes the quick smile somewhere that smile said something we’d barely escaped the drowning.) “Right now, she got Tina in Florida Gift“What are you reading?” I ask. Husna reveals the cover of the book without speaking; the title facing me: Emily Dickinson’s Collected Works. “She’s fantastic.” “I know.” Husna lifts the bottle into the light as a jeweler and reads,“What does this taste like? “Mango puree, water, sugar.” (Pakistanis own the convenience store at the beginning of a cu de sac subdivision,“Ok, sounds good.” Fairfield. No warning signs declare that pop- up book houses are slapped next to cracker jack house. Sure the colors change. The street names. Camelot Garden. Rock Springs. Castle Creek. Valhalla Estates. Ox Daisy. Andromeda Vale. What does any of that mean? Without the numbers, we’d end up in each other’s living rooms sharing stores. On Thursdays a truck with homeland vegetables arrives for a produce aisle that lasts four days: eggplant kafir leaves dill gourds roots of all sizes colors textures. On Thursdays the beer tubs are drained and moved to the side for a market of fresh vegetables and spices. Women in saris clean men with belts and straight pants maybe a manicured moustache or two Starcrest and Loop 410. No kidding, this is America.) I ask “May I rent a movie. “How’s this?” Husna does not charge for the DVD. I walk home to watch ChaalBaaz. (I am elated exactly as Los Angeles, extravagant, reflective clothing and convertible “Do you have another movie, “Actually, no sir, they are Bahaar turns to the movie rack and grabs another. “I love ChaalBaaz. “Is it a movie?” Bahaar smiles a gift“No, they are just a cardboard box with silver elephant wrapping paper. The Last Time I Use Sign LanguageThe shed is empty. My skin crawls. The hinge is snapped. Lock gone. The compressor gone. The router the drill the nail gun the saw gone. This is the third time my tools have been stolen in three months and not even at the same place. An aching smile quickly remembering weeks hungry for the extra forty a week, working. 8:38 AM The homeowner is a woman. Dignified and elegant this is what joins the mannerisms together it would be hard work to please her and not unrewarding, She says as if they are mine. Both placed in the corners.Did you know there was a human shit I say, How did that happen, I was here Saturday and Sunday. I keep this place locked up, we haven’t had any break-ins. Wait a second, I drove by last night, 10:30, 11:00. There was a car here. Was it Delvin’s car? A Cadillac? No, it was gray.She stops looking into the air; woman-gut taunt for she has reasoned, Which one of the kids wasn’t there I don’t know. (It is quiet.) I say, Well, let’s take a look atDiana? this cabinet, do you want a matte finish? Maybe semi, or gloss?” 9:11 AM The two cleaning ladies describe, You workers, nasty. Uh huh, take a dump at the drop of a 10:53 AM The cop is grown but younger. I get this a lot now. You know sadly he’s scared. It’s the ape in us, which makes mine something that says confident, a pheromone. But I let him know, “Sir” is how I will call him. He does all the driving, Well I’d go look for the compressor He smiles at the inevitability of justice and erosion. We enjoy the geology of the process. SATURDAY MORNING:Now you have the right to get the scene dusted for 8:00 AM I work non-stop for three months, seven days a week, seven to seven at my first job and evenings, sheet-rocking Paul’s house until twelve. Work that could not be slept through or put off. It is time to finish or accept an eternity of small details. Time runs together during exhaustion. There is no escape only the surety that your eyes will remain open: devoured by the sinewy muscles of direct sun light. The body awakens accustomed to Doing and needs little instruction. Quite often, I find myself not even thinking, yet there is the body cutting sheet-rock taking measurements scrapping out the house. There, those worn-out hands Do their thing two stringy legs with enough will to run forever. This is how you wake from five or six hours of closed eyes. Like you never quit same dirty jeans same work shoes. A prison built by me. If the mind revolts? If the body revolts? We have the cure morning coffee I will not! entertain that kind of mutiny. 8:09 AM I walk down the street to the convenience store across from the Bun N’ Barrel. Austin Highway is a large busy street with four lanes and wide shoulders. Of course, one truck, far off. I’ve crossed this street my whole life plenty of time. I cross the oncoming lanes. The truck is still several blocks off. I have two lanes left to cross. I hear the truck throttle. I sink into my spine, cause I don’t have… I’m tired. I don’t want to run. I will not be intimidated by a truck on the street I’ve been crossing as long as I’ve been alive. This is my town. I do not blink at the accelerating truck. As my heel sets down BBBBDDDDDDBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB. Chevy screams a breath from me at sixty miles an hour. I still do not look at him as I raise my arm high saluting one finger above all others. SSSSSSSSCCCCCRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRHHH. Red brake lights lock in a cloud of burnt rubber smoke. My adrenaline hits the base of my balls. I know death turns around. A beautiful and impossible three point turn. I face him cause the crazies never show your back. A parked car is just to my right. I edge behind the car in case he’s going to run me over. It is bright ungodly August 8 o’clock sun at ninety-five degrees with humidity you have to chew through, yellow jackets to sip. Through his window he yells, You little shit. You piece of fucking shit. Man you are in a truck. He gets out of his truck. I know how far I can get with this space.Come here pussy. You fucking piece of shit. GONE. Now I am scared and everything turns stone as time slows. I clench my hands. It is aYou fucking little shit. You little fucking shit good day. I’m not scared of you mother fucker. What did you say little shit? I’m not scared Good cause you’ll be there soon. The hottest bolt of August. His hand darts to his hip a gun holstered on his hip. I GET GONE. I am in the parking lot across the street, headed to the convenience store. His fierce skull turns on his chest. 8:11 AM I’m inside the convenience store. Safe. Safe as glass feels. Safe as hunted feels. I need a phone that man has a gun.White, everyone turns white, there are about four of us secretly thanking the end for being so predictable. I stare out the wall of windows his truck warbles in the heat evaporating, he drives off. The cops never arrive. 8:38 AM I leave the store. The customers are relieved. No one asks a thing. A slight suspicion that someone is trying to murder me not intentionally, but nonetheless I get a little nervous. When is the breaking point? When is enough, enough? Is it will? Am I willing this patience? A calm amnesia to obliterate the bombings. This Kind of Right Is Habit FormingMax was on Paul’s porch again. “Hello sir,” I say. “God almighty don’t call me sir.” “Max, how are you?” Eagle hands him a pre-rolled.“Hollywood! You got one of those fancy “They’re stealin my electricity I don’t got Max was knocking on Paul’s door off and on for months. Max is eighty-two. These circumstances had stuck themselves real good. We were“Paul, you talk with the landlord because I thinking he was losing his mind, like a bunch of us, slouch backed and grumbling. Since his wife died, Max was over at all hours knocking on the door telling Paul, or“They’re stealing the electricity.” “Check under my bed. Ferny and some We walk to his house, it’s the same thing. A house so full of old soup bowls and stacks of empty cat food cans. You couldn’t put a sheet under the bed let alone two full grown lovers. It was like that. We didn’t want to call attention to the fact that we didn’t believe him. You can really drive someone crazy that way I should know that real good. Max’s face was cut and scabby in crisscross patterns. “What happened to your face?” “Does it look bad?” “It looks fresh.” “They steal my electricity. Now they stole it His blue eyes pierce I know they don’t care. “They don’t have any respect, young or old. He let the pause go.“Some say, why some say, I’m the richest “Well you hear anything?” “No.” “Maybe they just waiting to tell me, cause, I He smiled, waiting for me to tell him, “Max, you are the richest man in the world.” * We are painting Paul’s house. Glass breaks and continues to break, Paul rolls his eyes and we walk around the corner. Max stands in the window with a hatchet. “I’ll get this motherfucker over here. Ferny Max breaks out the edges of the glass with the hatchet. “Max don’t hurt yourself.” “I need new windows in this house.” The sound of breaking glass garbage truck exhausts down the street the whistles of the brakes the whistles of the men riding on the bumper the soft concussion of bags and hydraulics the whistling of the neighbors. * The next day, I return Paul’s caulk gun. We move his drums into the van. Glass begins to break again. Neither Eagle or I can take it. “Max there is a different way “Ferny is the laziest son of a bitch in San “Ferny’s in jail.” Max busts the windows out with the hatchet. We do. There are two black and white televisions tuned to static, a radio crackles“Go head. Go head and look.” between stations. There is no relief from this frequency until I unplug them. His blackened sandal is full of calm, black blood. Max smiles.“Hey its much nicer than the back house,” Paul says. I pour him some water from a kitchen sink full of broken glass. I wash out the cup and“Yes it is.” serve him a prayer full of water, while we wait for the ambulance Max says, The house condemned. Max condemned to the State hospital. I see him in my“Yes. I will. I will. I will.” mind, beaten up in his old clothes the cooling autumn sun, grisly and fighting. a dirty lawn umbrella a chair two cinder blocks for a table |
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