This Book Is Not for You

by Daniel A. Hoyt

  But actually I was just being myself.

  She poked her index finger into my chest and then ran it over to my sternum and up into my chin, which she tilted a bit.

  “I’m awful all the time,” I said.

  “So am I.”

  “I’m really good at it.”

  “I know,” she said.

  She didn’t smile.

  We argued for a while, and then she said fuck it and she left to drive home to Kansas City.

  “If I come back tomorrow and you’re dead, I’m going to be pissed,” she said.

  It could have been funny, but it wasn’t.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I climbed back into the bed, buried my dying head under the cool pillow, breathed in the scent left by Saskia’s hair: honey and alleyway cigarettes and something like thyme, if I knew what thyme smelled like. Maybe it was basil. There were all these damn spices in the world, and just as many poisons. It was all too much. I lay there until the pillow lost its Saskia-ness.

  I went back to my apartment, the top floor of a little house over on Missouri. The door was half splintered and hung on one hinge. My clothes were thrown everywhere. The bureau had been kicked in. The couch was upside down. The futon mattress had two long ugly rips carved into it, like a giant X, and the gray batting leaked out. All my books were thrown in the corner, the paperbacks ripped up.

  It didn’t matter. Those books lived in my head. It was just stuff.

  You could get stuff anywhere.

  I walked down to the liquor store for a bottle of vodka, then returned to the motel and drank and read Huck Finn.

  The thing about Huck Finn is I don’t think he was as innocent as you hear, and by he I also mean it—because Huck is that book.

  There’s sex hiding in there, and sodomy, and Twain swore his head off, you know, and if you don’t think death and freedom have a codependent relationship, you don’t know American history, you don’t understand the raft or the river.

  I think maybe you need to read it again. Use your imagination this time.

  Think about what Twain left out, what he had to leave out.

  I don’t leave anything out.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I waited for Tax down by the river in a little clearing in the woods.

  I had been there before to drink beer and burn things.

  I grabbed some logs and some kindling and piled it all up in the fire pit, just a dug-out ditch paved with stones. I wanted light, so I could see his face. I wanted a bonfire.

  The backpack was filled with old paperbacks. I ripped out some pages—the copyrights, the acknowledgments—to get the fire going. I wasn’t stupid enough to bring the dynamite, or I was stupid enough not to bring it—one or the other.

  I had a good blaze going by the time Tax got there.

  When he slipped out of the trees into the clearing, he smiled in a fucked-up way. He clapped his big cymbal hands together. Even the parts of him that were usually ruffled had an unruffled sense. He was enjoying this.

  He looked at me, and the ghost looked too. He pointed a little snub-nosed handgun at me.

  “Dumb shit,” he said.

  I bit down on my lip so I wouldn’t react, but isn’t that a type of reaction?

  “Dumb shit,” he said again, and he shook his head.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “You trying to give me more reasons to shoot you?”

  “Did you kill her?” I asked.

  He looked at me in a way that could have been thoughtful if you didn’t know better.

  “Naw,” he said, “but I think I know who did.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said.

  “I saw all the blood on you.” He took two steps toward me and said, “Where’s Calvin’s stuff?”

  “Here.” I motioned toward the bag,

  “Hand it to me.”

  I lifted the bag slowly, held it out toward him but not close enough for him to reach.

  “Open it,” he said.

  He stepped toward me, but he didn’t grab for the bag. Instead, he pressed the hole of the gun right to my forehead. It felt like a cold little mouth.

  When I unzipped the backpack, The Sun Also Rises fell out, and then The Death of the Heart.

  “You fuckhead,” he said, and he clicked the safety off.

  I always knew that books could fuck you up.

  If I moved at all, I’d join the freshly dead.

  I held my breath. I tried to ignore the itch between my shoulder blades.

  Tax didn’t care anymore. He wanted me to stop existing. Not even a Ghost Machine could pull me back.

  CHAPTER ONE

  That’s when something that looked like Saskia stepped out of the woods, and I thought, oh fuck, she’s dead. I thought she was another ghost.

  But it was the real her, and she yelled, “I have the dynamite.” She waved another backpack in the air.

  “Don’t move,” Tax said. He swung the gun away from me and aimed it at her.

  “I have the fucking dynamite,” she said, then turned and ran into the woods. I waited for the sound of a bullet, but Tax didn’t fire. She wasn’t a ghost, not yet.

  “Shit,” Tax said, and he started to run too, and then I was right behind him. My arms snapped around his chest and my shoulder drilled into his back. Together we hit the ground, and he somehow lost the gun.

  “Fuck,” he said. He caught himself with his arms, but my weight pushed him down.

  “You asshole,” I said. I grabbed him and shook him. I crashed the meat of my hand into the meat of his face, and something crunched in his cheek.

  “What the fuck, man,” he yelped.

  My hands were around his neck, and I just kept squeezing.

  I only felt a little bad—like I gave someone ten bucks of bad and they gave me three dollars of bad back in change. You could spend that kind of bad in no time.

  He struggled to breathe, and I had to remember that he was human.

  If I killed him, who would care?

  Then it came to me: I’d care. I let go of his neck, and he pulled in a big gasp of air.

  The ground smelled like clover. Do you know that smell? It’s almost sweet.

  “Let the fuck go,” Tax said.

  He tried to buck me off, and I rammed a knee into his kidneys.

  “Knock it off,” I said.

  Everything settled but his voice, which was ragged.

  “What are you gonna do, faggot,” he said.

  I pushed his face into the clover with one hand and grabbed my phone with the other.

  It took me a few seconds to find the right buttons. I hoped Saskia had run far.

  “I’ve got a murderer out by the Kaw,” I said.

  “What is your address?” the 911 operator asked.

  “There’s no address,” I said. I described where we were. I told her to look for the fire.

  “They’ll arrest you too,” Tax said.

  “I know.”

  That’s when some guy started shouting out in the woods. “I found her,” he yelled. “We’ve got her.”

  Her had to be Saskia.

  “I’ve got you fucked two and a half ways,” Tax said. “You think I’d be out here all alone? I know you’re used to stupid, but this—”

  I rubbed his face hard into the ground. When I let up, he spit, and then he said, “I’m remembering each of these indignities.”

  Three people stepped into the clearing. One guy held Saskia in a headlock. Another held the backpack. The police would never get there in time. I used Tax’s head for leverage and pushed myself up.

  Through the muck of darkness, I couldn’t see Saskia’s eyes. She kept her head down, like our future was written on the dirt.

  “Shit,” Tax said. “Calvin’s only paying me to kill him.”

  Tax looked around, found the gun, pointed it at me.

  The other guys, real ugly fuckers, held on to me and Saskia.I didn’t recognize them. I couldn’t even recognize Saskia really. S
he wouldn’t look at me. The fire crackled behind us. Her backpack with the dynamite was just lying there on the ground now, waiting for something.

  We could hear the police sirens.

  The shithead holding me relaxed an inch, and I had just enoughtime to lunge. I kicked the bag of dynamite into the fire pit.

  “Shit!” Tax said.

  The nylon stink of it started to burn.

  We could have blown up in seconds.

  Tax and two of the shitheads scrambled for the bag. I turned and high-kicked the guy holding Saskia. My boot made contact with his skull and socket, with the sponge of his eye.

  “Go,” I said.

  I grabbed Saskia’s hand, and we ran.

  A gunshot clapped behind us. The breeze of a bullet flew by my neck as we crashed through the underbrush.

  We could hear police sirens, multiple cars. They had to have driven down the bike path along the river. I pulled Saskia down toward the riverbank.

  “Here,” I said.

  The sirens were all around us.

  We ran down the bank, slid through old dead leaves, and just as I thought, shit, it’s the wrong place, there it was: the weird outcropping of rock that hid the cave entrance.

  I had gotten high in that cave at least half a dozen times. That’s why I wanted to meet in the river clearing. There was a way to escape.

  Saskia and I clambered under the rock and snaked our way into that cave. We pressed together in the dark, listening to the sirens, to the police yelling through a bullhorn.

  We heard some things that sounded like arrests.

  We heard tramping feet.

  We tried not to move. We barely took in air.

  Somebody said, “Where the hell are they?”

  “Maybe they had a canoe,” someone else said.

  We waited it out. We listened until the night quieted down.The river lapped on the bank; some kind of wild animal panted.

  I tried to breathe up the darkness. Saskia smelled like cave, like sassafras tea, like roots pulled from the dirt. We hid in the cave the whole time.

  If that’s not some real Tom Sawyer shit, I don’t know what the fuck is.

  CHAPTER ONE

  If that guy I kicked in the eye was in bad shape, well, at least the cops were coming.

  He’d probably never, ever been grateful for the cops before. That’s how I rewired him. I made him appreciate law and order.

  I don’t even like violence anymore.

  Even then, I didn’t take any pleasure in it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Saskia and I went back to the motel.

  Tax must have gotten arrested. He possessed the dynamite, a handgun that had been fired. I had been shot at but not shot. The preposition changed everything.

  Saskia and I sat together in the bathtub, washing off the night. When the water turned black, we let it drain out, then filled it again. We scrubbed away at each other.

  The ghost watched our ablutions.

  She really did physics. She had all kinds of heavy and obscure textbooks to prove it. She explained to me how it all works, those balls tied to string that knock into each other again and again. All it takes is one ball to start the process. I can’t explain it back to you.

  She explained the physics of a mosh pit. I listened. I swear.

  It was interesting, but you can’t memorize your entire life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Why’d Allen do all that to me?” I asked.

  “He was fucked up,” she said. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “and I fucked the girl that he used to fuck. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “He knew it was stupid,” she said.

  When she looked at me, her face seemed eighty percent eyes.She tucked a sheaf of hair behind her ear, then bit the middle fingernail of her left hand.

  “Did you kill him?” she asked.

  “What? Fuck. No, no,” I said.

  She stared at me just like the ghost did.

  “Did you kill her?” she asked.

  “No!”

  “Maybe I need to turn you in.”

  “You are just like your brother,” I said. “He beat the shit out of me. He let fucking fascists torture me.”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “He said that to me too.” She started crying, but I could tell she was trying to stop. Her shoulders hiccupped a little.

  “He was a shit,” she said. “He was stupid. He was a sadist. He got high and drunk and pushed people into furniture. You’re not the only one he did shit to.”

  “What?” I said. “What did he do to you?”

  I got up close to her, and her face fluttered before mine. “

  Not like that,” she said.

  “What then?”

  “Nothing that bad,” she said. “He punched me a few times. Once he whipped me with a belt.”

  Marilynne just stood there, watching, I guess.

  I tried to imagine Allen’s ghost.

  I felt fresh hate. I wanted him to die all over again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mainly I try to tell as much truth as exists in any one moment.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She had a stripe of old scar on her lower back and I thought, Allen did this.

  “It’s not like I’m broken.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “It’s all healed over.”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Can’t we just be broken together?” she said. “Can’t we just be us?”

  She stood up, and that made her all muscle, tight and corded and firm.

  She grabbed me by the hips and pulled me toward her. My hand was on her hip. Her lips traced my eyebrow, found my lips. My other hand found her breast. Her hand found my penis. I think that’s how it went.

  We spent about eight hours in bed. We didn’t get much sleep.

  I could have stayed in bed with her forever.

  I think so anyway. I think there are pills for that.

  The shitty, busted-down bed was like a square, fat cloud. It was seeded with lust.

  Maybe that’s how it could have gone for the rest of time, but isn’t it clear to you that stupid shit happens to me? I make it happen.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I feel hunger to the second power,” Saskia said.

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “Meaning my hunger is multiplied by itself.”

  I dug my fingers into the bark of an orange Saskia had in her purse, then into the flesh. I pulled the whole thing apart. My hangnails tingled, and there were all these sections to separate and de-pith. I offered some to her, and she shook her head.

  “It’s good,” I said. “Like a little citrus earth.”

  I ate a piece. “Canada,” I said.

  “Here’s South America,” I said, and I held it up to her lips.

  She said, “Your continental proportions are all wrong.”

  “I’ll rethink,” I said. She nipped the piece from my hand. Her teeth looked like delicate cleavers.

  “You will not die of scurvy,” I said. “Not on my watch.”

  If Saskia were multiplied by herself, I don’t think she would be bigger. I think just the idea of her—her her-ness, her Saskianess—would expand.

  If I were multiplied by myself, it would be like splitting an atom. I’d explode. My me-ness is already too big, too messy.

  If Marilynne were multiplied by herself, she would retreat into her house, fear everything, lean on me for stuff, stab her hand with glass, die in a horrible way.

  If you were multiplied by yourself, well, I have no fucking idea. Maybe you’d need several copies of this book.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Saskia was not a placebo.

  Saskia did something to my body temperature, to the receptors in my brain. She broke down all of my muscles. She could make my legs give out. If I could explain these things to you—if I had those capabilities—I probably wouldn’t.

  If you want someone who explains,
go read some other book.

  I’m not just talking about sex, although when I was pressed up and into her, I felt more alive than at almost any other time in my life. It was the same sensation as being in great pain. Isn’t that when we’re most human?

  I know, I know. It’s fucked up.

  Saskia slipped under the covers next to me, nestled into me.She smelled like fire, which I am differentiating from the smell of smoke. She wasn’t smoky. She smelled like fire and something citric, like grapefruit.

  “I like your smells,” I said.

  She rubbed her hand over my stomach and then lower. “I see.”

  She kept me wrapped in her hand. I breathed her in.

  “What are we doing?” she asked.

  “Resting,” I said.

  “I’m asking a larger question.”

  I had never been good at things like that. You shouldn’t be all surprised.

  We didn’t have any rules. We didn’t have to talk about it. It was obvious neither one of us wanted the wrong kind of pain.

  “Harder,” she said.

  “Harder?”

  “Faster.”

  I strove for velocity. It was something about physics.

  “You get on top,” I said, and we tried to roll together, to stay attached. She had to climb back on, to remount. I looked up at her face, set, solemn. She went fast and then faster.

  Velocity like that doesn’t last.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Allen always said to stay away from you,” I said.

  “And?” she said.

  “The implication was he’d break your fucking back, seriously wreck you, if you got involved with his beloved sister.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he meant,” she said. “I can fuck up guys pretty much all by myself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If I love you, I love you at ninety-five miles per hour,” she said.

  “I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

  “I try not to waste my time worrying about messages from the dead,” she said.

  But that wasn’t true. I think that’s the only time she lied to me. The only time, plus two others.

  CHAPTER ONE