“No serial… Oh, hell no. You took the TV from the bar? Didn’t Cal just start there? You really think Big Randy won’t put that together? He’s not stupid you know—just a pig. Just a rutting pig. He’s all over the new girls now, taking them back to the office. Even when they gotta dance! Even when the crowd is rowdy, Randy’s got ’em cooped up back there all for himself.”
Donna and Alice used to be those girls back in the office with their razor blades and magic mirrors and stained panties landing on the floor. That’s how Randy says it. Panties. He really liked to pop the ‘p’ between his lips and let the rest slip through his stubby teeth.
“So what if we did? He doesn’t have any proof. There’s no way he’s letting the cops search the place, and there’s no one bigger than Cal to stop us.”
Donna taps her foot against the coffee table. Her frozen hair has melted and the couch is soaked behind her. She bites her purple lip and hums a little to herself. I know Alice it still sending her letters about Brad Paisley. About how soft his chest is in the night. About the booze and the coke and the taste of other men, how their sweat is cleaner, their minds are clearer. And I don’t want to blame her, but I do.
“I dunno… two hundred for that shit? Really? Did you even grab the remote?”
Alice’s old man shuts the door on me every time and her mother likes to call the cops to do spot checks on my place. Told them I was growing weed in the basement, that I had unregistered guns lingering around in the garage. Not a safe environment for children. She even told them about the stripper pole we had installed in the bedroom one Christmas, failing to inform the officers her daughter was the one who bought it in the first place. Everyone at the Stockyard called her Stacked Alice, even in toasts at our wedding. Her parents weren’t invited.
“Alright—how ’bout this? I know you won’t be findin’ two TVs like this for Del anytime soon. And I know two hundred is a lot to part with. How about you give me one hundred for Cal and instead of my hundred, you just let me take a look at those letters Alice has been sending you from Florida.”
Donna’s wide eyes move from her toes to my face.
“I don’t got any emails or letters, Jimmy. I told you. She isn’t saying anything to me.”
There is a yawn from down the hall. Cal keeps sorting through the videotapes, trying to line them up into alphabetical order. He likes to keep an order—a hierarchy of things. He includes women with those things, alongside ten-inch shrimp and thirty-two ounce steaks.
“Nothing? She’s posting up pictures and all kinds of shit. She hasn’t said a word to you? Bullshit, Donna. Just let me see a few and I’ll just give you the fucking TV. You can have it.”
Donna shakes her head.
“I’m not giving you anything, Jimmy. You understand a restraining order, right? You know she’s not coming back until you’re locked up. You get that?”
Alice’s parents screen my calls. I don’t bother leaving messages. Lawyer says that is just further evidence. Yesterday, I drove past the school a few times hoping to see one of them poke a head out of a window or something. I can’t tell any of the kids apart in their snowsuits. “I get a lot of shit, Donna. I fuckin’ get enough shit.”
I try calling the mill, try asking for a tour on the night crew. I can sling cases. I can use the forklifts. I know which trucks need a boost and where to find the temps taking another smoke behind the fuel shed. They tell me I’m suspended pending further review every time, like I can’t read or something, like I can’t see the notices lingering on my fridge, like Brad Paisley isn’t playing in every single supermarket, singing about Alice in the mud, Alice in the backseat, Alice everywhere with him, everywhere but here.
I grab a bottle off the floor and chuck it at the wall. It shatters above Donna’s head.
“Just show me the fucking letters, alright?”
Alice never liked country music. She used to make fun of the Hank Williams shit my Dad left me, rolled her eyes at all the Willie I played in the car. She called it my dead dog music. I slowly won her over, slowly watched her work Steve Earle into her sets down at the Stockyard, watched the men wince and moan while she took off her clothes. The words dripped off her with the sweat, and I knew she was coming home with me. It’s always best to know.
It’s the not knowing that brands you. Leaves a mark for everyone to see.
“Del! Del you gotta come in here now! You gotta get up! Fuckin’ Jimmy—”
Donna is up off the couch and running down the stunted hall. There are only five rooms in this box and I can hear Del stumbling around in the bedroom, looking for the rifle his uncle gave him for protection after the cops confiscated everything. I grab another bottle of something from the sticky floor and chuck it down the hall after Donna. It catches her in the back. She falls onto the floor and the smell of gin fills my face. Not knowing is the worst part. Donna has all those letters with the details laid out in ink.
“Jimmy, there aren’t any letters! There’s nothing!”
Donna’s looking up at me from the floor. I can hear Del stump toward me from the bedroom with one arm done up in plaster. The signatures on the cast are all his own. His ancient gun scrapes the wall as he moves. His tattoos are black and blue impressions of Donna’s face.
No way will he buy that TV now.
“Get the fuck out of here, Jim,” Del says. The floor is sticky. Cal tries to slip out the front door behind me with a handful of videotapes. Del is almost as tall as Cal. Used to toss dirt clods at his mom’s car whenever she came to pick him up. Del liked to call her the town drain.
“Oh you brought the ’tard with you, eh? Doin’ some community service tonight, Jim? He ain’t taking any of those tapes with him, you know. Those are an investment. How you doin’ anyway, Cali? You’re momma ever end up taking you out there?”
Cal is tugging at my arm. He wants to go. He’s forgot his postcards on the floor. According to the addresses, he’s been all the way down to San Diego this week.
“You dumb fucks,” Del says. “You think I wouldn’t just jack the thing myself? I should just shoot you both down now, but no point there. With the injury, I might just get probation. Look at that poor ’tarded bastard. Why you gotta bring him, Jimmy?”
Everyone knows Cal was a mistake. Grew up with his mother and a bunch of rotating uncles, who left behind cigarette burns and the taste of soap in his mouth. Their cars stained the driveway until it looked like one big oil patch shining in the dark.
“We’re going Del, alright? Just put your shit down. You don’t need another violation.”
Cal shakes his head. He doesn’t want to put down Del’s investment. I grab a few of the tapes from his giant hands. Cal’s mother always told him his dad had run off to Sacramento, where he was doing play by play for the Kings on the radio. Del says the tapes are worth something, worth protecting, and Cal won’t let them go. He needs the money for a ticket to the coast.
“Just give me the tapes. Give me all that shit and take your junk ass TV down to the pawn.”
Cal starts chucking tapes at Del, just whipping them at the cast. One bounces off Del’s face and spools of black tape sprout out across the floor. Little frames of naked Donna writhing on the pole unfurl across the sticky yellow carpeting. I can’t see her face, but the outline looks like her. She’s still crying on the floor, trying to avoid the broken glass. Cal hasn’t been taking his meds for six hours now, and Del has been after him for seventeen years.
I watch Cal grab Del’s broken arm and slam him against the wall. There is a snap.
“Put him down Cal, you gotta put him down,” Donna screams.
The lawyer says the best thing for me right now is to stay out of trouble. Stay away from Alice’s friends, her family. Stay away from everyone. I’ve spent too many nights inside, but I understand his point. Del is making some weird choking sound and his face is changing colours. I slowly back out the front door and let the screen shut quietly behind me. Donna yells something after me, some
thing about calling off my fucking dog, but I don’t got a leash. Cal won’t need the money from the TV now.
The air outside is cold and the snowmen are still watching me. There’s another bellow from the bungalow. Everything looks pink and grey. I put the car into reverse and pull out of the driveway. Cal is probably choking Del until he blacks out, the same strategy he’s been using at the Stockyard for the last two weeks. You see the patrons walking around with purple throats the next morning, trying to order eggs through mangled voice boxes. Donna’s probably flushing all their pills down the toilet ’cause the neighbours will be calling the cops again—a morning ritual in this neighbourhood. Sirens and birds to wake the children with the sun.
Brad Paisley is on the radio and his voice is singing to me about all little moments, all the dirty words. The time she lost the directions, and the time she burnt his birthday cake. He’s singing about Alice and I know she’s not coming back. I know there are no letters. The Panasonic is still in the backseat and it’s watching me make a left onto a one-way street. One television is better than none, even without the remote. Only houses I’ve ever seen with two were in Cal’s magazines and travel brochures. Palatial places down by the ocean. Places where the view goes on forever, a sight beyond your reach.
I need something I can’t touch. Something my hands can’t quite hold. Everything I cling to these days turns to shit and lead. Even the Panasonic is beginning to crack around the edges.
It’s only twenty-five hundred miles until Modesto.
Hatchetman
Dad says I’m never supposed to show no one the tattoo. They wanted my name to be Hatchetman on the birth certificate, but Grandma Hubert said no. She’s dead now like the dog and the fish and all the other stuff that dies in our house. It was her house, but now it’s our house. She couldn’t say no no more. You can’t say no to cancer, Mom says. You can’t tell cancer to go nowhere. Mom says it goes wherever it damn pleases and sometimes I get scared it’ll go for me next. People say I look the most like Grandma Hubert, even though I’m a boy. I think it’s ’cause Mom shaves my head.
Dad’s sayin’ skin is stronger than paper, stronger than any bullshit certificate. He’s sayin’ skin is durable, skin is leather, skin is what they made Grandma Hubert’s couches out of—animal skin but still. He’s saying Hatchetman is a good name, a strong name, a name to be proud of and he’s draggin’ me into a truck we bought off of Sleepy, who’s my uncle, but a fake uncle. He don’t have any blood with me, and so he don’t gotta worry ’bout the cancer like I do.
And we’re in the truck with all the bottles from the rec centre we haven’t returned yet and all the dead wasps in the bottles and all the half-dead wasps trying to crawl out of the bottles and Dad is sayin’ skin is for life, skin is a pact. He says he’s learned as much in twenty-six years on this earth. The stereo is the only new thing in the truck and it’s playin’ Dad’s favourite Insane Clown Posse album, the one with the golden face on the front. I wanna pull over and pee, but the grass outside is long and yellow and filled with weeds. Dad holds my hand while he steers.
I’m lookin’ for snakes in the ditches, tryin’ not to think about peein’ or Grandma Hubert or Uncle Sleepy and his two lazy eyes. I never wanna look at them, but it’s like when you step on a bug—you got to look. And then Dad is sayin’ how Grandma Hubert’s final will was bullshit. But she wanted to live, I think. He’s still mad that I look like her. He’s still mad my name is Austin Saintclaire-Hubert on report cards, and doctor’s notes, and detention slips. I never got to be called Hatchetman. He’s mad, but he’s holdin’ my hand so I don’t say she wanted to live. I nod and say yes, fuck Grandma Hubert and the dog and the fish and everything else that leaves me.
Dad is drivin’ with one hand and we’re off the good roads now, we’re goin’ to see Harmony, and we don’t need a map because I been goin’ here my whole life. All ten years. I remember the sounds of the needle and my Dad’s back turnin’ black like a cape and what cough syrup smells like. And then there is gravel under my feet and Dad’s talkin’ ’bout the Dark Carnival and a new album and he’s so excited. He and Mom get so excited whenever ICP comes to town. They throw dishes and smoke in the bathroom and go see Harmony for days, but they can’t now ’cause Grandma Hubert is fifty-six and dead and who’s gonna watch me and little Hurley?
Harmony is Dad’s best friend from way back in juvi, and he don’t care that he’s got a girl’s name. He is sippin’ Faygo he gets shipped in from Detroit, but it smells like he puts paint in it. He asks me if I ever heard of Johnny Cash, the first unofficial Juggalo, author of “A Boy Named Sue” and I say no and he laughs. I feel bad for the teeth he’s got left. They gotta be lonely.
I was born a Juggalo and I will die a Juggalo, Mom says. I seen ’em throwin’ dirt on grandma’s Styrofoam coffin, I seen what dyin’ is and I don’t think it matters one way or ’nother if I’m a Juggalo or not. No matter how many times I paint my face or go to the Gathering or get righteous with some mainstream faggots, I know I’ll still end up in Styrofoam under all that dirt.
And Harmony says it’s time for my first tattoo now that Grandma Hubert is gone—fuck that old cow, right Hatchetman? And no one calls me Austin at home, they all call me Hatchetman. I got named after the logo they put on all those Psychopathic Records—the logo you see tattooed on knuckles and tits and shoulders when summer comes around. That’s their mascot—the Hatchetman. It’s hot and Dad is lifting my shirt, but Harmony is pointing at my neck. How about there, right there, let’s put it there instead. His lonely teeth shake when he laughs.
Skin is a pact. Blood is a pact. Me and little Hurley are in a pact for life and she’s only five. She doesn’t know about keggers or five am police calls or what Mom’s puke smells like. She doesn’t know I’m here right now on Harmony’s stupid porch. Only things she knows are she’ll die if she eats peanut butter and Mom and Dad love to paint their faces on weekends.
Dad is sayin’ I don’t know, I don’t know, and Harmony is laughing. We’re on the porch and it’s startin’ to rain out there on all the yellow grass and the weeds and the hidden snakes. Come on, don’t be a bitch, you hide your tatts at the factory, let the boy be a man. Let him be a real Hatchetman, a real psycho clown for once, and Dad is nodding okay, okay, go ahead and Harmony claps his hands together like thunder, but it’s just rain out there.
The needle is sharp and hot on my neck and I’m not crying yet. I’m thinking about that dog and the fish and Grandma Hubert and what dirt tastes like. Dad is saying he doesn’t like the blood, too much blood, and Harmony is singing his favourite ICP song under his breath. And I don’t wanna feel the needle so I stay still and watch the rain outside the porch, watch the wasps drownin’ in their bottles, the snakes suffocatin’ in their ditches, all things just falling apart.
They’re writing Hatchetman onto my neck in blue ink. I can feel the letters growin’ and I don’t wanna cry. They’re on the letter “c” and the rain is still comin’ down and I still gotta pee and Harmony is humming, humming out all the hate he has inside, and my Dad is smiling at me. He’s smiling and he’s so happy and I know my neck don’t say Hatchetman. I know it don’t say that. It can’t. I can see it in his face.
Even dead Grandma Hubert knows all he’s trying to say is “I love you.”
The Lesser Half of Sir John A. Macdonald
Greg the Golden Goose named the first lesion Winnipeg. He blamed that cold city for the illness that wracked his body now, the one that woke him up in the middle of the night screaming. It was the screaming that got him kicked out of the men’s home the night before. He had lesions up and down both his arms like nodes on a map, crisscrossing veins, moles and scars from broken bottles. Calgary. Medicine Hat. Niagara Falls. Each lesion had a place these days.
He’d only ever been as east as Moncton, but that was far enough. He couldn’t speak French and he didn’t like the cops out there. They talked to you by looking you in the eye. They tried to act like a fath
er figure, but all their kids were just as screwed up as anybody else’s. They tried to call him Gregory. Greg had spat in one cop’s face and spent the night getting beaten with a bar of soap. He would travel no further east than Montréal these days. The booze was cheaper there.
The line at the grocery store moved slowly. Greg clutched his last ten-dollar bill between two shaking fingers. He twirled it back and forth like a leaf. The Sun Chips in his other hand kept crackling every time he moved. Greg knew that the ridges on those chips would help them hold onto the inside of his stomach. He was tired of vomiting up all his food in tidy little piles in empty parks or dark corners in the shelters. He needed something with some texture, something with a little bit of grit to keep it down. Doritos hadn’t done the job and he had given up on eating meat after two weeks in a slaughterhouse outside Hamilton. They had him push a broom to wipe up all the chin bristles from the pigs, bristles boiled off their snouts by the hot, high-pressured water. He could still hear the creatures grunting. They destroyed his love for bacon in that place. Greg would never forgive the slaughterhouse for that one. Sun Chips would have to do for now.
“Sir, this is the line for sixteen items or less. If you could go line up at another cashier…”
Winnipeg was still the worst though. The place was filled with tired faces and buses that couldn’t make it two blocks without stalling. Your breath froze in the winter. You couldn’t even piss yourself in the park without it freezing to your leg by morning. The summers were filled with mosquitoes and black flies, slowly turning your skin into one giant, red pulsing organ. They always seemed to go for the joints, the inside of elbows and the outsides of ankles and wrists. And there were always more to come. They would suck you dry if they could. The city tried to fight them off, spraying down the streets with trucks full of toxins. The first lesion was named Winnipeg, but he couldn’t place all the blame on that place. It all went back to Jeremiah.
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