Misery Guts

iii.

Summer of 1915: The Great War is looming on the eastern front; the first fighter plane takes off against the wind; people eat about as much lard as they do hog; Friday nights are for player pianos; and many Americans still hoof it everywhere on foot—meandering along as slow as molasses in January—while up in Detroit, Henry Ford has got one hell of a flame under his ass. Lying midway between Saint Louie and Chicago, snug in the arms of the Mighty Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, the Spoon River Valley is carved by trickling waters like a hot knife to butter. A thatched quilt of maize, rye, and vast stretches of Indian grass, known as “Big Blue,” growing wild and free.

Now, it’s been said, Big Blue grows so tall and robust that a man on horseback can see but an arm’s length before his own face. But on sweet occasion—beggin’ to prove we ain’t all a bunch a’ country bumpkins, I suppose—the rich soil has been known to sprout greatness with vision beyond such nose length. Beyond leaves of grass, amongst the plain-spoken, librettos soar high above with tireless wings, crying out against thy blindness. And by any luck, with a dash of grace and a thick slathering of the fat, the leaves may vary from green to burgundy to a dried-up brown; the seed head course, with three spikelets, resembling a turkey foot—a booger if you catch one in the heel. It’s no secret that larger-than-life skies come a dime a dozen about the heartland. The wild blue yonder tends to make a big thing of it, stretching out all entitled-like about the generous stretch of American girth. A land beautiful and pastoral, where yawning pastures of cattle graze, all a man needs are a good dog and a shotgun. And more oft than not, down-to-earth folk remain just that, salt.

Sunflowers, lilies, buzzing insects, butterflies, birds, and leaves in a radiant glow. The three-story, five-bedroom, Victorian standing behind the broad sugar maple is painted pearly white, elegant, yet moral and sentimental. The house is charmed with a rocking chair veranda wrapped tightly around the house like a belt about a bloated man’s gut, providing shade and lemonade on long summer days—giving off the pretense, “Someone’s bringin’ home the whole damn hog.” Getting your foot in the door, you’ll feel right at home amongst peacock feathers and paisley, old gold, terra-cotta, olive drab or khaki, red and yellow embellishments, and threads of Japanese gold that accent the times. The walls, pasted with warm patterned hues of purple and sage, rise sixteen feet into the foyer. At the foot of an open staircase, oak floors—bordered in cherry with a Greek-key pattern—reflect the colorful rays pouring through the stained-glass transom. In the sitting room, old photographs of bygone folks hang straight on their nails—wet colloidal plates of shadowed figures with shifty eyes unable to stay focused for the twenty-second exposure. The fireplace mantle is lined with a few of 1915’s bestsellers:

The Valley of Fear

The Good Soldier

And:

Of Human Bondage

The sun rose upon a tranquil world and beamed down upon the peaceful village like a benediction—and so on, long modernized, deconstructed, and destructed, for a new nihilistic approach, as we approach that looming war curdling on the horizon. About the matching dining room set, carved heavy and overstuffed, fresh flowers fill a vase, large floor-to-ceiling windows allow in a cool breeze, and crystal chandeliers sparkle. A Tiffany lamp stands in one corner, a mahogany grandfather clock in the other, chasing the ever-fleeting moment.

“Susie, can you hear me? Susie, are you there?” I ask from my window, overlooking the oaks and maples of the high part of town.

“Oscar, get down here!” my father’s voice rattles the floorboards.

Gracing the kitchen with the waves of her chestnut hair—worn in a prominent side-part, fringe nearly touching the brow, lobes exposed—her flesh is warm ivory. My mother, a contemporary woman: Dazzling. Easy on the eyes. Foxy, one might say. Flared skirt creeping up the calf progressively further each year. Dutifully, she beats orange juice into a bowl of eggs with a fork and saws carefully through a loaf of bread, mindful not to slice open her finger, before dropping two slices of life into an electric toaster:

1200 watts

Bacon fat sizzles, the scent absorbing into the threads of morning. The clock on the Hot Point Automatic Range reads:

7:28 am

“Better get a move on,” she says as I pull out my chair.

“‘Dog Killings Baffle Police!’” My father: A sandy-skinned man, slender, clean-cut, dark-brown hair slicked back to the left, blue serge suit, with thin legs allowing him to easily cross one over the other. “The world, I tell ya,” scorning, reviling, and deriding through a pair of round wire-rim glasses. “‘Federal Reserve Act signed into law by President Wilson,’ just who the hell does he think he is? He’s going to get an egg to the face!” he slanders.

“You’re working against the clock, dear,” says my mother.

“I hate school,” I say, pouting, cheek full of bacon. “Why do we have to go to school in the summer, anyhow?”

“The way it’s always been, dear,” she says.

A toe-head, here I sit. Oscar Clyde Olsen: Age twelve. A little gentleman wrapped in robin’s-egg blue, knee-high socks, knickers, wheat skin, rosy cheeks, hazel eyes, with a cheek full of soggy, undercooked bacon before a sorry excuse of a carbon-rimmed egg.

“Anyhow, you love to read!” she says, slicing a banana right down the middle.

“No one likes me at school.”

It’s true. I’d cried when Jimmy slugged me in the eye. Jimmy: Fourteen, living on a fixed income of violence. And I’d cried in front of the whole damn’d lot, and everyone laughed and threw apples at me. Even called me a bookworm—which I suppose is no surprise to anyone. And Andy— “Handsy-Andy,” he tripped me. And hell, if I didn’t fall flat on my face right in front of Susan of all people. Oh, Sweet Susie—I can’t bear the thought of his grimy hands all over you. And during that late spring snow, Tim-Tim the Cop’s Kid stole my jacket, and I came down with a fever. But hell, I didn’t mind. I got to stay home from school, sipping on chicken soup all day. My father even brought me a sherbet in bed. “Ice cream never asks questions,” he says, “ice cream understands!”

“Well, make some friends, dear.”

“Boy, will he be a hard act to follow. Nincompoop’s going off the deep end this time. Hell, we’re already hanging in a balancing act.” Unable to come to terms with the day’s news as always, pant legs bristling as they always do, tingling with electricity as is the times, “It’s just not on, I tell ya! A damn central bank will serve only a handful of financiers at the expense of small banks. The fool’s going to wreck the economy with inflation. Boy, if I could give him an earful, he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I tell ya!”

“What’s inflation[CMP1] ?” I ask.

“Who’s going select the board, after all, himself? Hell, we’re handing it all over to the feds. They’re going to run us right into the ground. It’s a goddamn kakistocracy, I tell ya what!”

“What’s a kakisory?” Unable to wrap my tongue around the tongue twister of a word.

One of my father’s favorite hobbies was throwing his vocabulary around small-town folks unable to wrap their minds about his ivy-choked education. See, my father studied at Knox College, along with the likes of John Buford, Edgar Lee Masters, and Eugene Field, the “Poet of Childhood.”

Bullfrogs and bellyaches if you ask me.

“A government run by idiots and dimwits is what it is. Damn thieves,” rather unable to keep a lid on it, static fills the air.

I cock my neck to the left and watch his flamboyant gestures like a curious dog. I might dare say there’s something about his hands, manicured, graceful, womanly. On the other hand, my mother’s hands are scarred and blistered from ongoing experimentation with housewifery.

“No better than crooks,” he tells me. “Out for blood. Hell, the mob is more organized than Uncle Sam and no less honest!!” Paper crinkling—exclamations—another rhetorical question. “Did you know bank robbers stole an equal amount the government took last year in taxes—to the dollar?” Expletive![CMP2] “Incompetent idiots can’t even pave the goddamn roads with all that cash!!”

Sliding an orange omelet from a heavily smoking pan to his plate, “Quit your cursing, Mr. Olsen,” my mother, fiddling sticks of her own. “Such is life. Besides, you should cheer up—you got yourself a brand-new car, mister!”

“Easy for you to say,” says my father, dropping the paper to his lap to inspect his eggs. Using his fork, he examines the blackened under-skirt of the beat-up jalopy.

“Oscar, why don’t you play ball with the boys after school?” she says. “You’ve been lying around with your nose in Grandpa’s books all week. You must stay fit as a fiddle—typhoid is going around.”

(Typhoid is always going around.)

Sawing down the middle of his rubber omelet, “You know, honey, we can afford help—we do have maid’s quarters, so why not put it to good use?”

(Butler’s quarters too.)

“They hate me,” I say, poking my egg, yolk bleeding out, the poor victim it is.

“Join the scouts,” she says, “I hear they—”

I scrunch my nose as my father interrupts, “Reading is good for the boy. You don’t want to be a nincompoop, do ya, son?”

“No, sir,” I say.

“And besides, you certainly are one to talk, Mrs. Olsen. You have your own snout in a book every time I turn the corner,” reaching for the maple syrup. “I’ll tell ya what, when I get home from work, we can toss a few,” and leaning in with a whisper, “or how ’bout a sherbet!”

Hands pressed to her hips, “That’s right, you could use some fresh air yourself, mister!”

“Nonsense, feeling finer than frog hair!” he says, “Right as rain,” sweetening his fatty bacon with glistening syrup.

Scraping char from the skillet before dropping the whole crime scene into the trash bin, “Lord knows you spend too much time in that dusty bank vault, anyhow.”

“Laughingstock, he’s off his trolley, I tell ya!” And with a glance at the smoking trash, “Honey, you’re going to burn down the house!”

The second the afternoon school bell rings, I am off until supper. Shirtless and shoeless, I sprint down a deer trail as spring-loaded grasshoppers lurch out of the way. Jackrabbits scurry, sparrowhawks dart, blue jays flutter, the rare cardinal perches on a sole American Elm, and a red-tailed hawk glides effortlessly about the prevailing winds. Big Blue doesn’t grow much in my field; rather, milkweed, purple coneflower, and a gentler, kindlier pony grass, topped with fluffy plumes of silver-green flowers that part like soft clouds in my wake as I shed my knickers. I toss them on a branch at the tree line, plunging into a hickory forest carpeted with ivy, spooking a family of white-tailed deer fleeing in leaps and bounds, the buck thrashing about with fury. As, upon arching limbs, ornery squirrels snicker—getting a kick out of dropping nuts on any wandering noggin.

I’m thirsty for blood, trampling down the ravine in a wild holler about a great expedition amongst an invisible war party. Big Creek meanders slowly in the valley bottom—weaving through White and Red Oak. And I slide down an eroded embankment into its waters muddied with rich soil. Sloshing upstream in hopes of facing the enemy head-on, I vow never to return without victory, to seize the prize or die, knowing if I am courageous, I’ll be allowed to wear feathers and paint like the braves in Grandpa’s books. So, I carry forth—giving it my all—trudging through sticks and muck, climbing over a beaver dam, and splashing neck-high into a deep murky pool. Dragonflies buzz. Water bugs scurry. And a water snake slithers off in surprise.

Encountering the enemy, I take my life into my own hands, rushing upon the Osage as blood and guts spill out into the waters. Invisible arrows pierce bellies. And my tomahawk—a short rotten stick snapping in two with my swing—cracks two skulls in one fell swoop. It’s an epic battle but a be-all to end-all; I grab a slain warrior by the hair, let out a yelp, and take his scalp with an ethereal blade. And eager to return in triumph to my father—having put an end to this war, piece a’ cake, I think—I embark upon my return to my village, drums carrying on through the leaves. Bumbling about as young boys do—lost in the very real figment of my imagination—I mindlessly swat the nettle stinging my calves. Oblivious to the thorns in my heels, my mind’s eye envisions dancing about a blazing fire—prized scalps, spirits, held high, as the villagers foresee word of victory. On top of the world, I know an honorable feast awaits me—PB&J with a tall glass of lemonade!

Suddenly, a rustling catches my attention at the tree line and soft faint singing. I drop my scalps and scan the flora, tiptoeing forth through the ivy. And suddenly, I spot you—but damn! A twig snaps below my heel. Startled, you quiet. Looking back at the tree line under thick, heavy brows slanted deeply inward like a raven’s wings that intensify the severity of your gaze. Penetrating eyes of sable-brown, a circling tinge of old-world blue—glossy saucers that shimmer and shine, reflecting the darkness of the thicket back at itself. Your eyes widen, and I step behind a tree. “I see you,” you holler, and I step back out foolishly as you look me up and down with doe eyes below your crinkled brow. A loose strand of hair curls about your cheekbone, and your long, dark braids shimmer. You smile. Giggle. And a lump forms in my throat.

Hot damn, I’ve forgotten my knickers on a branch and quickly cover my boyhood with my hands. Idiot—laughingstock, I shout into myself. Are you acting your age? I scorn. Hell, no, I realize. And you snigger again, batting your long, dark lashes. But you turn, though your body ahead of your gaze, and you walk away with that everlasting grin. With one hand, I wave goodbye, praying I’ll see you again in one hand; in the other, well—like water off a duck’s bill, a red fox darts over the horizon.

Calling the game, the neighborhood boys inspect two patrol cars parked outside my house. I walk past them like a ghost and inside, find my father hunched over in a kitchen chair. My mother stands behind him, rubbing his shoulders. In one hand: the glass of bourbon he’s trying to get to the bottom of. In the other hand: the head he’s trying to get a grip of. A far cry from the height he’d been at breakfast. A sight for sore eyes, to say the least, deeply etching to my mind.

“Dear,” says my mother, walking toward me as I stand with my head cocked in confusion. She pulls me by the arm to the sitting room. Returning to the kitchen, she pours coffee for the officers, and I listen from around the corner—a fly on the wall—ears abuzz.

“And Edward?” says my father to Officer Taylor seated across the table—young and handsome.

“Oh, he’s fine, just a bump on the old noggin’, nothin’ a serving of Bess’s old meat loaf ain’t gonna fix right up.”

“And Chief Roy?”

“Took two slugs, but that son of a bitch is tough as nails—death is scared of ’im,” says Officer Taylor, and my mother clears her throat, grabbing for a saucer from the cabinet. And the rather handsome officer squirms in his chair at the sight of her calves, “Pardon my language, ma’am,” he says.

Two other officers talk shop a few feet off, custodian helmets under their arms like pumpkins they’d snagged off a porch. While Sergeant White—a short, squirrely man with no chin to speak of, and a wiry mustache—stands silent in the corner, stiff as a broom, his own helmet strapped atop his tiny, round head. As the others wait patiently for coffee, he is brewing, a bead of sweat running down his temple—awaiting his moment to shine.

“Sugar, cream?” asks my mother.

“Why, thank ya, ma’am,” says Officer Taylor, as she sets a steaming cup before him and pours in the cream, and it swirls about in spirals. “Sure smells good!” he says with a crooked grin and sparkling eyes that shine, lightening her own, turning up the corners, erasing the wrinkles that have suddenly formed in the past few years. To say the least, aging is not easy on my mother, the last to realize time has been gracious seein’ how woman age quick in the parts, she remains as pretty as a picture. While most country ladies toughened up like smoked leather, my mother cuts quite a dash at thirty-two. That time between is sparse for too many, yet ironic given the sprawl. Day by day, girls step out of school and look back into the mirror to see their own mothers’ faces looking right back at themselves. My oh my, where has the time gone, they wonder.

Anyhow. The charming Officer Taylor is dressed to the nines in his pressed uniform. He made sure to eat a raw egg for breakfast and lets his tooth shine across the table for my mother.

“Oh, please call me Roxy,” her own shame-laden smile spreads across her face as she diverts her eyes from his gorgeous grin and chiseled jaw, which is quite pleasant to look at. She returns faithfully behind her husband, threadlike in the spine: My father, head in his petite hand, bourbon dwindling in the other.

“And O’Brian, is death scared of him as well?” he asks.

Officer Taylor loses his grin and peers down at his coffee, finally matching the moment in proper terms. And spying from around the corner, I watch my father cover his moistening eyes.

“That makes all the difference, now, doesn’t it? Forty years old—” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “A goddamn travesty!”

My stomach turns, and my knees quiver, and I wonder, what about the sherbet? Realizing: So much for the sherbet!

“And the bastard who shot him?”

Sergeant White now takes his cue. Clears his throat, and before our eyes, his small round face brightens—as the spotlight has finally turned on him. His eyebrows perk. And with a clearing of his throat, he demands the attention he believes he deserves. In a high tenor, one gnawing at the ears, he says through the wiry threads of his mustache, “Hank Lytle, getaway driver. Cousin of the perp. Miraculously, O’Brian summoned the last of his strength and fired off three rounds, killing Lytle—a real hero, if ya ask me!”

“And the perp—the crook who locked me in the vault?” asks my father; perked up, thirsty for blood, he forsakes his bourbon.

And slowly and methodically pacing back and forth, tapping the tips of his fingers together, eyes to the stage—stage left, stage right. “R. C. Saunders, dishonorable discharge from the Army. Got word on the wire—released from the pen just two weeks ago. Real highflyer, train robbery charges throughout the state. Appears he left his own kin to carry the can. Why the hell they let an animal like that out of his cage? Hell, if I know. Shoulda’ put him down like the dog he is when they had the chance.”

My father, look of dread, “So, the son of a bitch got away scot-free, you’re telling me?”

“Affirmative,” says Officer White.

“My god,” says my father, dropping his head onto his fists.

“Now don’t you worry, ma’am,” says Officer Taylor, “his name is out across the wire, and he’s bound to be picked up in no time. No time at all!” He begs to grab her by the hand, but she squanders it on my father’s boney shoulder.

“So, he’s out there,” says my father, looking around with due paranoia.

With a full-body quiver, tail between my legs, a sudden zap evicts me from my body, throwing me hovering in some ambient state about the ceiling, glancing back toward life. A wayward fish on some invisible string, I observe my own frightened puppy dog eyes catch my mother’s attention—my face as white as a ghost, until my father slams his fist down on the table. I’m suddenly sucked back into my own skull like that fish whiplashed into a boat. I clench my bladder with crossed legs as coffee bleeds into the white tablecloth, and my mother runs for a dishrag. “That bastard—stole my father’s pocket watch!”

Officer White again clears his throat and holds out his hand, and with a spring of his fingers, a golden shimmer drops by its chain, with a tick, tick, ticking that stops my heart.

I plop down on the exposed root of a large Bur Oak. I feel afraid and confused. I toss my ball into the air and let it hit the ground beside me. It’s Saturday afternoon. The bank is closed, and my belly turns as I hadn’t eaten the sandwich my mother made me. I’d fed it to a stray wanderin’ through the yard—looked like he could use it. My father is angry again. It’s been this way since the robbery. We live on eggshells, and I seize up, the ball, again, hitting the ground as he stomps down the back steps, letting the screen door slap shut behind him. He walks over to me and messes my hair, “Goin’ for a cigar,” he says and goes to the garage. He starts the Fleetwood, grinds the gears, backs out of the driveway, and speeds up Elm recklessly. The air is relieved; the birds return, and I can breathe again—but I let the ball lay and peek in the back door. My mother peers silently out of the kitchen window with a hollow gaze. With the creak of the hinges, she snaps out of it and gathers herself—straightening a towel on the sink’s edge. A sudden hum. She dries her eyes on her apron, sniffs, and turns back. “Would you like a sandwich, dear?”

“Can I get a pop?” I ask.

“Sure, dear, there is a nickel in my purse,” removing her apron. “I think I will plant some lilies today.”

The Fleetwood zooms past:

Edison Phonograph

Baldwin Pianos

And just past the bank:

Frank Write & Brother Newsdealer

Water drizzles out of the back of the Bennet Ice wagon as a horse drops a load on the brickwork out front of the beerhouse as the straw-colored wheels skid to a stop. A drunkard squatting on his box peers at the shiny car through squinted eyes in the midday sun. His mind is quiet; he thinks only of drink. My father greets him—the first time he has spoken to the likes of this man. The drunkard: Holding out his palm, hoping for a nickel. My father scoffs and makes his way down the stairs to the subterranean darkness—a smokey rumble, a murmur, a grumble and growl, and bursts of startling laughter. Folding into the bar between two overalled men—a short one to the right, a tall one to the left—Mr. Olsen, my father, leans in on one elbow as they do.

And with a hard slap to the shoulder, the tall man, “Ain’t you the president of the bank?” he asks.

Mr. Olsen holds out his hand as the squeeze rearranges his hand bones.

“What the hell ya doin’ in here? Shouldn’t ya be at a bistra’ eatin’ oysters, Rockefeller?”

“A Lady Bal-ta-more,” says the short man.

My father massages his hand as a rasp carries through the smoke-choked air, “Who let you out’ the vault?”

“What can I get ya’?” The bartender in a vest and tie, bar cloth over his arm, brings a sense of civility back to my father. He orders a beer and takes a deep sigh of relief in the small oasis of civilization extracted from such austere posture, even in an incorrigible place such as this. He knows this man’s checks don’t bounce—ever. Thus, he respects him mighty so.

Music jangles from a player piano in the back corner as the tall man says, “Hell, I’ll settle for some pigs in a blanket!”

“Some poor man’s cake,” says the short man—a chuckle and cough and slap to his own swollen gut.

The good ol’ boys laugh. Call him “Mr. V” for short. Mr. Vault for long, hovering curiously about, askin’ about the robbery. The good ol’ boys: Rough about the neck, hands like rope. Rough about the edges, with sharp tongues that whip, slicing open flesh like a straight razor. Slurred syllables. Fumbling over pronunciations. An utter lack of enunciation. They ponder him aloud and in silence from dark corners. Mr. V orders another round for the boys, and they cheer. The lower class, sitting well below the salt—farmers, blacksmiths, plowmakers, and plowers alike, drinking their drink straight up, no chaser. Men, the like, with whom he has never familiarly socialized.

“Whiskey,” orders the tall man.

“Make it two,” the short.

Men who stand mightier than himself, my father knows these men are only as robust as their checks that don’t bounce at the end of the day. And for that, he holds court. Yet, Mr. V is naïve that many of these fellas whisper on revenge. And hell, a mighty few are ready to rough ’im up a little, if not with words, with fists—fists clench in the corner below rumbling, sore lips that quiver. Soggy, swollen, wet with whiskey, and trembling with rage. While others fly under false flags, seeing the opportunity to sail with a captain, as far as they see, befriending the power player—seeing the gentleman shaken on his pedestal—what the hell, why not, they wonder. Knowing downright things happen around this man. Can see it in each other’s eyes—mutiny—when my father looks away. Can see it in his eyes when he glares back with due paranoia—fear.

But with each swill, concerns dwindle, fists unclench, jaws soften, as do shadowed gazes, turn away as fellas are soon distracted by rambling means and tangents—meaningless dribbles that collect on the lip of life. Disputes amongst friends and enemies kept closer. Still, as mentioned, those few, believing Mr. Olsen’s company may accompany certain things—or rather, a lack thereof, such as evictions, bankruptcy, and bounced checks—cozy up to the president, buying Mr. V two fingers at a time—making a full-knuckled fist of it. Nickels they can’t afford to lose, let alone piss away. It is an investment as far as they see, even they can’t see but an arm’s length. Leaves of grass. So, amongst the drunken chatter, my father—two sheets to the wind—leans back another and orders one more round for the boys! The boys cheer.

“Ain’t gotta twist my arm,” says the short man, shouting over the player piano.

“Do—you know—what the last dinner—served on the Titanic—was?” says my father in a bibulous tone and rhythm, well whitened up with the boys, mimicking their speak. “Roast duckling—with apple sauce!” A compliment, given with a hiccup and a side o’ grin.

“So, ya gonna put yer money where yer mouth is, an’ buy those goddamn carbine rifles or what?” says the short man.

“Keep dem crooks outta town!” says a jaundiced old man with a missing tooth leaning in on the conversation.

The short man’s spit flings from his lips, “Dem niggers and spics too!”

“Cheers to that!” says the old man with a gummy salute. “Goddamned darkies—” losing his train of thought, vision dim with drink, down a gulping drain. The door opens, and light pours in, waking my father to his dread, and his eyes widen. He lifts his dropped head in anger, and the room spins in rage, and his ears ring in hate, and he sighs and slams down his mug, saying, “You’re goddamn right! We’re gonna kill every crook that steps foot in this town!”

“Hell, my wife can roast a duck—” says the tall man.

The sun sets on our hamlet. Dying down for the night, the old drunkard hobbles his way down the alley in the darkness, past a veiled face in a shadowed nook—blade shimmering in a sliver of pale moonlight. Well-bent at the elbow, the drunkard, failing to notice his own dice with death, carries on. A hack. A spit. He labors for his honest, yet homely nest of straw and wool snagged from a clothesline. Plopping down, he rubs his swollen knees and yawns, scratches his beard, passes gas, and lays his weight back into the damp brick wall with a deep sigh.

But a quick YELP widens his tired eyes and sends his weary heart into a short sprint, rising to his throat for the occasion, a throat raw with drink. The yelp of pain labors him back to his swollen feet, and wearily he stumbles back up the alleyway in concern—the night quickly silent as the grave once more. And just a stone’s throw ahead, he spots in a sliver of moonlight a brown mutt lying on its side, slow to pant, laborious to catch one more moment on this earth. The drunkard kneels. The mutt looks up at him with all it’s got left. Sad, teary eyes gleam in both directions. Blood oozes from a deep wound in its neck. And after one last pant, the mutt drops its head to the cool brick and dies. The drunkard strokes the mutt behind the ear when suddenly, another faint cry grabs his ear from behind a nearby trash bin. He discovers a wee puppy in shivers, gently picks it up, and it paws helplessly at thin air. Trembling in his palm, the little creature nuzzles up in the nook of his arm. The old drunkard says, “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” as a shadowed figure streaks past the periphery and into the night.

Motionless in bed, I listen as my father double-checks the locks, yet again, click-click, click-click. I tense as he climbs the stairs. I hold my breath as he’s on the piss and makes his way to bed, thankfully snoring in no time. A weight off my mind, I release my breath and let the springs squeak as I bounce to my feet in my one-piece. Out the window, I spot a dark silhouette crossing the lawn below—surely that old raccoon making its way for the trash bin, again. And I hear paper crinkle—my mother yearning for the social circles she’d left behind, reading letters by candlelight:

Dear Roxy,

Seeing you have become provincial, I simply cannot fathom how you are faring without the proper necessities of life, such as the theater!

She lets out a breath of her own just as a commotion outside startles my father from his slumber. And with a curse, he stands from bed and rummages through the closet, “Goddamn, son of a—”

“What are you lookin’ for?” asks my mother.

“Something to bash that crook’s head in! That’s what I’m looking for, Roxy!”

“It’s only that silly raccoon again. Honey, you’re drunk—come back to bed!”

“Son of a—good for nothin’ crook,” as he makes his way to my room, where I’ve jumped back under the covers, lying stiff as a board, afraid to swallow—quilt pulled up to my eyes, as he digs through my closet.

“Shh, you’re going to wake Oscar,” says my mother from the hall.

“I’ll kill him,” he says, grabbing my bat.

Trampling down the stairs, he unlocks the front door, click-click. I run back to my window and watch my father stumble belligerently about the front lawn, shouting angry slurs, venting his spleen, lashing out at ghosts—having it out with his own shadow. Bats scare from the attic. Neighbors from their beds. Windows light up. Curtains open. And dogs yelp and howl. And I tiptoe out of my room to spy on my mother, who has retreated to her own bed. “Let him be a madman,” she mumbles, “I’ll have nothing of it,” and she again picks up her letter and reads:

Dear Roxy, I pity you!

In the candlelight, those words dance about in the madness. A madness that has become the night. And she drops the letter and sits up on the edge of her bed, face dropped in her hands, at her wit’s end—living on raw nerves. Until the floor creaks, and she looks up at me, “Oh, honey, did he frighten you?”

“No,” I lie.

By the time the police arrive, my father has sobered up some. And I spy from the top step as he explains he’d heard someone outside. I watch as the officers bob their heads; after all, my father is, in fact, an essential pillar of the community. And yes, they assure him—his thick checkbook is in good graces. But not precisely in those words. “Due to your generous patronage to the department, it goes without saying, we’ll be sure to increase our tours of inspection.”

My mother quietly invites Officer Taylor—with chiseled jaw and sky-blue eyes that sparkle even at night—into the sitting room. He anxiously sips on the coffee she’d brewed just for him. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her husband, she whispers. “Ever since the robbery.”

“Never can be too safe, ma’am—lotta bad guys out there.”

“In a tiny little town such as this?” she asks.

“Ma’am, you’d be surprised.”

She suddenly looks afraid—or feigns to be.

“Now, don’t you worry, ma’am—”

“Oh, please call me Roxy,” she says.

“I’ll keep an eye on things for you—Roxy.”

“That’d be mighty kind, Officer Taylor,” grabbing him by the arm.

Sergeant White motions my father to the parlor with a slight nod of his own. “Next time,” placing a blued .38 special into my father’s hand, White says, “put a hole the size of a turnip in his head.”

My father takes hold of the gun and says, “Officer White, is that blood on your sleeve...?”

“Hmm, it appears so,” says Officer White, scraping at his sleeve with his thumbnail, “Rabid stray—had to put the bastard down!”

Tring-tring, tring-tring, rings the telephone as my mother jumps onto a kickplate of an old shovel in an old-weathered pair of ankle boots. Digging the spade into the ground, she turns the black midwestern soil—earthworms getting their wiggle on in full swing of late July. She fashions a small hole with her forearm gloves, sprinkling a handful of marigold seeds and covering them with dirt. Tring-tring, tring-tring. She jumps up on the kickplate again, jabbing every ounce of her 110 pounds into the soil—giving hell to the earth, the tring-tring giving hell to her, as steam pours out of her ears. She drops the shovel and, throwing her gloves to the ground, stomps up the back stairs, “Now, for heaven’s sake, is everyone deaf as a doornail around here?” Receiver to ear, “Good afternoon, Mayor. Yes, I’m doing just fine, thank you. Oh yes, yes, well—yes. Thank you! Yes, I’m sure he is around here somewhere, let me holler for him—oh, that’s mighty kind of you, Mayor, yes, yes, thank you, Mayor—Mayor, just one moment, please—oh, yes, I’ll be sure to do that. Oh, thank you, Mayor, you as well, Mayor. Just one moment, please—oh, yes, of course, and tell Mabel hello for me. Yes, we’d love to—sounds lovely. One moment please.” She covers the receiver, shuts her eyes, and shakes her head back and forth in thwarting irritation, “That man can talk the leg off a donkey!” And I hear her shout through the roof, “Honey—the house is on fire!”

“I’m right here, dear,” says my father from behind his paper, “no need to shout!”

“Let’s take a ride, boy!”

I drop my book, bounce off my bed, and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and the drop of a hat, I’m in the Fleetwood flying my palm through the breeze like old Orville Wright.

Walking into the City Building, my eyes light up before two-dozen Krag carbine rifles spread out on a long wooden table. The mayor holds a gun in his hands and greets my father with delight spread across his jolly face. “Mr. President!” Dern near tossing my father the weapon. “Why hey there, Sam.”

“Oscar,” says my father.

“Why hey there, Oscar!” says the mayor.

Inspecting the weapon unnaturally, I can see that look in his eye when he is doing math in his head, and I know he is ready and waiting to ask the mayor for the receipt. “Sergeant White,” he says, and Sergeant White gives a squirrely nod before the display of firepower—a shit-eating grin hidden under his bushy mustache. Five-foot-two, Sergeant White is rough and ready. He wears his custodian helmet indoors over his small round head to make him look a good foot taller. A bachelor living with his cigar-chewing Mee-maw. Mee-maw: Slowly dying of pulmonary emphysema. Sergeant White has fire in his belly. He takes a tablet twice a day. Has Mee-maw cut the crust from his bologna sandwiches. Has a phobia of needles and a passion for the theatre arts—a particular taste for Shakespeare. Believes Chaplin to be a buffoon, a hack. Sings tenor in the church choir. Sees a whore down in Bernadotte once a month. Tears up when he reads Mr. Rochester is gone from the house for a week, and it’s rumored...he may not be back for over a year—words tuggin’ on his heart strings every night before Mee-maw drifts off to slumber. Sergeant White owns three cats named Ethel, Minnie, and Horace and has a somewhat exaggerated disliking for Canis lupus familiaris Linnaeus. In layman’s terms, the domesticated dog, and strays alike. Sergeant White is due to train the new civilian police force to load, fire, and clean the Krag carbine rifles, purchased on my father’s dime—a dime spinning about my father’s head in circles.

“Receipt? Doggone! Must’a left it on my desk,” says the mayor with a pat of his empty pockets and a good shrug. “Hell, last time I saw you, Sam—”

“Oscar!” my father corrects him, again.

“Oscar, you were knee-high to a grasshopper,” says the mayor. “You got one hell of a pop there, and that mother of yours—I tell ya what. Oscar, you ever held a gun before?”

“No, sir.”

“Better not have,” says my father.

My eyes widen, and I look up at my father for permission.

“They’re not loaded, are they?” he asks.

Sergeant White opens the bolt on one of the long guns, checks the barrel, and places it in my hands, and I’m mighty surprised by its weight.

Sergeant White, “8.5 pounds; 49 inches in length; 22-inch barrel; bolt-action; 5-round magazine; shoots a .30-40 cartridge; 30-40 rounds a minute at 2000 feet per second, with a range of 900 meters—approximately 3000 feet. Heavy, ain’t it?”

Town dump: marmalade jars, tiny glass medicine bottles, liquor bottles, broken ceramic pots, chipped and broken China, rusty peach cans, cocoa cans, soap wrappers, bullet casings, animal bones, and food scrap heaped amongst blackened, smoking rot that stinks to high heaven. An echoing bang sends the cawing crows and stray mutts fleeing with their tails between their legs for the safety of the distant tree line as my father—shook—hands the rifle back to Sergeant White.

“Ah, hell, let the boy fire one off!” says the mayor, repositioning his sagging trousers.

Removing my fingers from my ears, I watch my father massage his bony shoulder as Sergeant White pulls the bolt handle up and back toward him, places one round in the magazine, closes the bolt, moves it forward and down, feeds and locks the cartridge into the chamber, and before I know it, I find the heavy rifle again in my hands. “Ready to fire,” he says. “Point ‘er downrange and hold ‘er steady right between that spic’s eyes.”

Peering down the V-sight, the barrel circles around the head of a mustached man in a sombrero, two bandoleers crisscrossing his chest, pointing straight back at me, saying in bold letters:

I WANT YOU, GRINGO!

Fight in the Mexican Revolution and be proud to ride with PANCHO VILLA!

“Now, take a deep breath,” says Sergeant White, “and when on the exhale, gently squeeze the trigger.”

But I can’t center the heavy barrel between the Mexican’s eyes for the life of me.

“Hold on tight, son,” says my father, “it’s got a kick!”

BANG! The deafening explosion knocks my socks off and blows out my left eardrum—a ray of sunshine bolting through the Mexican’s left eye as I shoot my own eyes over to see the mayor, a dog with two tails, smoke rollin’ out of his barrel. A box of birds in his eye—hell, he’d kick heels if he wasn’t so fat. Lips bubbling, I hear not a word, only a tring-tring, tring-tring.

My father curses as the Fleetwood kicks up mud, but I can’t hear nothin’. And he lets it loose as we race away, throwing up gravel and scat. Once the Fleetwood is good out of sight, Sergeant White leads the mayor to the tree line. “You sure you got rid of the body?” asks the mayor.

“Affirmative,” says Sergeant White. “Not a thing to worry about.”

The mayor stops to kick scat off his shoe on a tree, “Goddamn it!”

White lifts a shed of oak bark leaning on a fallen log and grabs a large carpet bag hidden underneath. He lugs it over to the point the mayor has downright refused to walk beyond. With labored panting, he dabs sweat off his brow with his handkerchief.

“Is it all there?” he asks, pulling up his trousers with a cough.

“Affirmative,” says Officer White, plopping the bag at his feet.

The mayor bends forward and digs his hands into the bag elatedly. Quickly, his shit-eating grin turns to a smirk of confusion, jetting his head slightly to the side in a scowl of disgust. And he raises two handfuls of wet, rotten bill notes and shouts, “No, no! You son of a bitch.” White looks about with due paranoia in the echoing ravine as the mayor continues to belittle him at the top of his lungs, “Buffoon, couldn’t you find a better place to hide it?” he scoffs, flinging the valueless pulp from his fingers. “Your basement? Hell, under your goddamn bed?”

“Mee-maw is awfully nosey!” says Sergeant White, chin drawled back into his throat.

“Mee-maw...? Mee-maw! Why you little twerp,” he cries out, lunging forth toward Sergeant White, who jumps back, sending the mayor face-first into the poisonous ivy.

“Mayor, let me help you,” says White.

The mayor swats him away, “You good-for-nothin’ mutt—get your filthy paws off me!”