Knockemstiff

by Donald Ray Pollock

  Leo scooped some change out of a jar and sprinkled it in Randy’s hand like he was pouring gold dust into a little bag. “That’s it?” Randy finally said, staring down at the nickels, dimes, and quarters.

  “There’s quite a bit of money there,” Leo said.

  “I let you suck my dick!” Randy yelled.

  “Quiet down, you,” Leo ordered. “That’s all I’ll pay for something like that. You got a lot to learn, you. I could have had more fun with a slab of bacon.” He pulled a sweet roll from the pocket of his robe and chomped the end off it. “Now,” he said, “take your ugly friend and get out of here, you. Boys like you are nothing but trouble.” Flaky crumbs floated through the air like tiny golden gnats.

  Randy looked over at Del and nodded. “I want more,” he said, and Del swung the lamp at the fat man’s head.

  . . . . .

  THE FISH STICK GIRL GRABBED HOLD OF ONE OF THE METAL poles that people hang their clothes on and started twirling like a dancer in a strip club. Del dropped his soggy jeans in the dryer and walked back over to the window. He watched her reflection spin faster and faster in the glass. Her long hair flew behind her like a cape. It seemed to Del that she would surely fly into the wall or bounce off one of the big metal machines. She began emitting a high-pitched squeal that sounded like an ambulance rushing down the highway looking for something to feed upon. Del backed away and waited for the inevitable crash. It was like being at the Atomic Speedway on family night, hoping for someone to fuck up and die so the kids would have a good time.

  . . . . .

  NOT LONG AFTER RANDY WON THE MR. OHIO CONTEST, DEL stopped by to ask a favor. “No way,” Randy said. “You never pay back.” He was leaned back in a chair behind a gray metal desk in the garage he ran with his brother, Albert. The big trophy sat behind him on a shelf.

  “You’re famous now,” Del said, figuring he’d try a new angle. “What’s that feel like?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Randy said. “It don’t make me no money if that’s what you mean. I didn’t even get the Bob Evans commercial.” He kept squeezing a little rubber ball with his hand. His ears flexed every time he mashed it. Del couldn’t imagine him selling sausage patties on TV.

  “Look, man, I ain’t never said anything about what happened in Florida, you know that.”

  “Ha! Delbert, that’s all you ever talk about,” Randy said. “Shit, you even told Sheriff Matthews.”

  “How about two hundred?” Del asked. “They won’t let me back in my room.”

  “I ain’t got it. You realize how much the drugs cost to win a big contest? I got more tied up in these arms than you’ll steal in your lifetime,” Randy said. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do, but you better get out of here before Albert comes back. He ain’t liked you since you fucked up his stereo that time.”

  . . . . .

  EVENTUALLY RANDY’S HEART GREW TOO BIG FOR HIS BODY. He was one of those pincushions who never take a break, the kind that get hooked on size regardless of the consequences. “They won’t let me smoke,” he wheezed when Del stopped by the rest home to see him. Del looked over at the oxygen tank standing beside the hospital bed. The nurse had told Del that Randy was strapped down because the medication made him hallucinate. He hoped maybe his cousin had some pills stashed away.

  “Shit, you don’t smoke,” Del said. “What would Mr. Charles Atlas say about that?”

  “I’m way beyond old Chuck now,” Randy said. “Give me a weed.”

  “Maybe they just want you to get better,” Del said weakly.

  “Fuck that, I’m a dead man. They say my ticker’s big as a football. C’mon, Delbert, gimme a fuckin’ cigarette.” Del loosened the top restraints, and handed Randy his pack. “Watch that door,” Randy said. “That one aide is a real bitch.”

  Del watched Randy gag on the cigarette in between hits off the oxygen mask. “Hey,” Del finally said, “remember that book I used to read all the time? Dorcie and Cole and…shit, I can’t remember the other one.”

  “Holly,” Randy said. “Her name was Holly. She was practically a virgin.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Jesus, I can’t believe you remember her name.”

  “Now that Dorcie was something else,” Randy said. “God, I wish I’d met her when I was benching six hundred. I’d have tore that up.”

  “Christ, Randy, it was just a book. I mean, those people weren’t real or anything.”

  “Oh, no, you’re wrong, man,” Randy said. “They was real. More real than most shit anyway. I still think about her. What’s that tell you?”

  “What about the old man then?” Del whispered, leaning in close to the bed. “Do you still think about him?”

  “Jesus, Delbert, you act like that’s the only thing in your life that ever really happened. Fuck that old bastard. He got what he deserved, the way I see it.” Del stood up and began pacing around the room. “Hey, while you’re up, hand me that magazine there,” Randy said. Del glanced around, saw an old copy of Ohio Bodybuilder on the windowsill. There was a picture of Randy on the cover. Del looked at his cousin in the faded photo, the victory smile, veins popping out everywhere. He handed over the magazine just as Randy took another hit off the cigarette and started coughing. It sounded as if someone was busting his chest apart with a jackhammer. He dropped the cigarette on the bed next to the oxygen mask. A small fire erupted in the sheets. When Del grabbed the water pitcher, Randy waved him away. “Get the fuck out of here,” he gasped. As Del hurried out the door, he turned back to see Randy ripping up the magazine and feeding photos of his glory days to the flames.

  . . . . .

  DEL HAD THE FEELING THAT HE’D GO ON FOREVER, WHICH is a great feeling really, especially after you’ve watched your cousin commit suicide with a Marlboro. When the Fish Stick Girl finished her acrobatics and slid down the pole out of breath, he pushed her down on her knees behind the restroom door. “Act like you’re doing this for money,” he said urgently, unzipping his pants.

  “Here?”

  “Why not?” Del said. “This place is dead tonight.”

  “How much money?” she asked, settling back on her heels.

  “I don’t know. Enough to buy a hot dog.”

  “A hot dog?”

  “Not much, just some change,” Del answered, placing his hands on her wet hair. He closed his eyes and began to hear the ocean off the Florida coast in the dryer’s muffled rumblings. Inhaling the dank laundry smells, he thought of Leo’s mildewed carpet. He pictured the lamp in his sweaty hands, felt the weight of it, saw the seagulls make another pass around the shade. The Fish Stick Girl kept banging her face into his groin, and for a moment Del was fifteen again. He was on a Greyhound going south and reading that section in “Reds” where Dorcie fires up barbiturates for the first time. Randy was sitting beside him squeezing his pecs together and urging him to jump ahead to the chapter about the black guy named King Coon who knocked the white girls up with his thumb. Then they were laughing, pointing their own thumbs at some blond woman seated across the aisle. When Del realized it was over, he looked down and saw the Fish Stick Girl smiling up at him. He’d forgotten all about her.

  After he folded his clean black jeans, Del and the Fish Stick Girl left the Suds and headed up the street. It was one o’clock in the morning and the air was cool and damp with dew. “Boy, you sure get into it,” the Fish Stick Girl said. “What was so funny?”

  “I think I saw my cousin.”

  “Nobody ever told me that before,” she said. “Have you been taking my meds again?”

  “Well, I appreciate it anyway,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Now you do something for me,” she said, opening up her purse.

  “What’s that?”

  “Here,” she said, shoving a fish stick in Del’s face.

  Del hesitated, then grabbed the fish stick and bit a cold chunk off one end. It didn’t taste like fish at all, but he imagined it was something else anyway, the way the devout do with
the little wafer and the grape juice. “Okay, now close your eyes,” she said. Del shut his eyes. “Don’t peek,” she ordered. As she pulled him down the street, he pretended not to know where they were going. She liked that. Cracking his eyes open, Del saw thick black clouds move across the sky and cover the moon like a grave blanket. He closed his eyes again and crammed the rest of the fish stick into his mouth. Suddenly, he was very tired. He felt like the ragged ghoul staggering across the screen in an old movie, the peace he sought always out of reach. They walked on, the Fish Stick Girl leading him by the hand.

  BACTINE

  I’D BEEN STAYING OUT AROUND MASSIEVILLE WITH MY CRIPPLED uncle because I was broke and unwanted everywhere else, and I spent most of my days changing his slop bucket and sticking fresh cigarettes in his smoke hole. Every twenty-four hours, I wiped him off with a wet cloth and turned his broken body over to air everything out. He’d been totaled in a freak car crash and had ended up with a giant settlement that cursed him with enough money to vegetate for the rest of his sorry-ass life.

  I was supposed to be staying straight—his daughter had even insisted I sign a goddamn scrap of paper—but late one night I found myself fucked up in a strange car littered with flakes of dead skin and stolen tools and those gas station cassettes that are always on sale for $1.99. The driver was a hillbilly guy named Jimmy who kept calling me cousin, but I couldn’t even remember meeting him—let alone seeing him at one of the reunions we used to have when our family was still permitted in the state parks. Still, being the type of person I was, I’d apparently let him talk me into huffing several cans of Bactine, and then I was sick, and my brain felt like a frozen bleach bottle. As snow swirled all around us in the Wal-Mart parking lot, I rinsed the inside of my face with Jimmy’s last beer and vowed never to stick my head in a bread sack again.

  Some time after that, around 3:00 AM, we ended up at the Crispie Creme looking for Phil, a friend of mine, who was supposed to have some Seconal suppositories left over from his dead dad’s unsuccessful bout with cancer. The Creme is the only thing open in our town after the bars close where you might find people like us, but there was just Mrs. Leach, the cross-eyed waitress who always creeped me out because once, in jail, I’d held her son in my arms. Wherever I went in those days, I stumbled across the bill collectors and misfortunes of my past, while any chance of a future worth living kept spinning farther and farther away.

  We ordered coffee, and then Jimmy and I sat down in a corner booth away from the old lady so she didn’t have to look at us. Why worry an old woman at that time of night? The place was all windows and plastic woodwork and those buzzing fluorescent lights that always make me look like a corpse. A radio in the back was playing a fast Christmas song that only religious people could understand.

  “That’s the last time I do any of that stuff,” I said. “I was talkin’ to fucking Fred Flintstone that last can.” Fumbling with a cigarette, I took a chance, surprised I didn’t ignite from all the fumes I’d inhaled.

  “Fuck, all I ever get is the sirens and those goddamn goofy lights.” Jimmy pushed back a wad of crusty hair. He had sideburns that didn’t match, and the eyes of a man you wouldn’t trust with a milk cow. “One time though, out at the Torch Drive-in, I did get eaten by a giant bird.” He said this with great feeling, like he was recalling his first kiss or the best day he ever lived. “Sonofabitch pulled me up outta the car like I was a little worm. Damn, cousin, that was a good time.”

  Mrs. Leach brought the pot, set down two cups smeared with orange lipstick and chocolate thumbprints. Looking up at her, Jimmy asked, “Hey, girl, how’s that ol’ Lester doing these days?” I motioned with my hand for him to shut up, but he’d already blurted it out.

  “Cream?” was all she said. Though she was looking at Jimmy, her face was turned toward me because of the awful way her eyes were scrambled. Heartache and ridicule and the night shift had turned her into a coffee-spilling zombie. You could have nailed a cross to her forehead and the woman wouldn’t have changed her expression. Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and trudged back to the shiny counter, her white waitress pants saggy in the ass and stained with coffee spots and doughnut grease. If I were a man running for office, she was just the kind of person I might appeal to.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you? Don’t you know he’s dead?” I said in a low voice, hoping the mom wouldn’t hear.

  “Who died?” Jimmy asked, tearing open a little plastic thimble full of artificial cream. “You mean Lester?”

  “He’s the one hung himself in the jail last summer,” I whispered, covering my cup with my hand as some of the red, crusty skin around his mouth flaked off and dropped onto the table.

  “Shit,” Jimmy said loudly, slapping his tattooed hands together, “I remember now.” He lit a cigarette, then glanced back at Lester’s mom. She was picking pieces of lint off her frayed sweater, dropping them to the floor like little mashed cooties. “Oh, well,” he said, shrugging his skinny shoulders, “what you gonna do? Hell, me and Lester went to school together.” He motioned with his cup toward Mrs. Leach. “I knowed that old bag all my life.”

  Then, without thinking, I said, “I was there when they cut him down.” It seemed that I always talked about shit that I didn’t want to talk about, but could never say the things I wanted to say. “Had a trash bag wrapped around his neck,” I added. I could still see the young deputy, dropping his big key ring, screaming on the radio for backup. Before I knew it, I’d wrapped my arms around Lester’s quivering legs and lifted him up, his piss soaking through the top of my orange jumpsuit. I was doing ten shamefaced days for shoplifting a lousy package of cheese, and for a brief second or two, I saw saving him as a chance to prove that I was better than that. But when the deputy ran down the stairs, I grew confused, then limp. I hoped nobody would know the difference. The day before, Lester had pushed a pencil up his dick. It was his greatest accomplishment. I’ll never forget the way he kicked when I let him go.

  “I can see killin’ yourself, but not with no fucking trash bag,” Jimmy said.

  “You keep doing that spray lube and shit, you won’t have to worry about it.”

  The glass door swung open and two big, homely women walked in looking guilty. They were the kind of women who, out of sheer loneliness, end up doing kinky stuff with candy bars, wake up with apple fritters in their hair. They looked over at us with bold little smiles that indicated either stupidity or desperation. Jimmy leaned back in the booth, eyeing them like a desert sheikh buying a keeper at a white-slave auction.

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  “No way,” I told him.

  “Shit, I ain’t had none in a month. I’d blow the top of that one’s head off.”

  The older woman waddled over and squeezed into a booth opposite the counter while the young one stood and ordered a big box of day-olds and two quarts of hot chocolate. She was packed in a pair of those stretch pants that overweight people should be thrown in prison for wearing. A faded Reds ball cap was cocked on her head at an angle that seemed to foretell, in my gloomy state, an ill-fated ride with a stranger. I could almost see a garden of moss slowly spreading over her secret resting place.

  “Want me to talk to ’em?” Jimmy offered, between attempts to attract the younger one by extending his tongue until it touched the tip of his runny nose.

  “Nah, they’re here for the sweets,” I said. “Besides, I ain’t never screwed a big woman and ain’t about to start now.”

  “What the hell? Fat girls like to fuck, too. I can’t believe someone like you is so goddamn picky.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, setting down my coffee cup.

  “Well, your teeth and all. You’d be doing good to screw that old girl. You ain’t exactly Glen Campbell.”

  I’d had enough of his mouth. Grabbing hold of his collar, I jerked him across the table. “You little sonofabitch,” I said, twisting the dirty shirt around his skinny neck, “you just don’t know w
hen to shut up, do you?”

  I choked him until his tongue popped out, then shoved him back down in the booth. He coughed and spit a gob of thick poisonous snot out onto the worn linoleum. “Jesus, man, I didn’t mean nothing,” he said, rubbing his throat.

  “Just mind your own business, okay?” I said. Turning away, I looked out the window at the snowy street, hoping someone would show up with enough stuff to put me under. At one time, I’d practically been considered a handsome man, a regular party boy; decent women called me by my real name while the strippers at Tater Brown’s let me light their cigarettes. But that was before some ugly bastard named Tex Colburn caught me in the Paint Creek bottoms picking through a patch of buds that he’d been planning on ripping off himself. By the time he ran me down in that cornfield, he was so pissed that he had his boys hold me while he chipped my front teeth out one by one with a spike nail he pulled out of a rotten fence post. Every time I flinched, he cut up my lips. Now I was at the mercy of a welfare dentist who spent his office hours at the clinic trading spit with the volunteer eye doctor. In the reflection from the glass, I tried out one of my old smiles. But the happy-shit days were gone, and I sat staring somberly into a pink, toothless cave.

  “Well, fuck,” I said after a few minutes, and turned back to face Jimmy, who was busy pouring sugar out of the dispenser and dividing it into two lines with a coffee spoon. “What you think?”

  “Hey, I don’t even know this Phil fucker,” he said. “We just gonna sit around all night, or what?”

  A clock shaped like a doughnut said 4:20 AM. Though I hated to admit it, Phil was probably passed out somewhere, enjoying his dead father’s legacy. I found myself wishing I had a loved one who would die and leave me their barbiturates, but I couldn’t think of anyone who’d ever loved me that much. My uncle had already promised his to the mail lady.

  “Goddamn him,” I said, half expecting Jimmy to snort the white crystals spread out on the table.