“How many medicines are in a trial pack?”
“Two or three tops,” I said. I was happy to have gotten him off the subject of the dog. “And when they run out you can go back to the clinic, and if they have any more trial packs, they’ll give them to you, no problem.”
“What if they don’t have any more of the medicines that I like?”
“Well, doctors and drug companies are always working hard to develop new medicines, so they’ll have something comparable, I bet.”
“What do you take?” said Moany.
“Oh, I don’t take anything at the moment. I pray.”
“You sure know a lot about medicines.”
“Well, when I get really down, financially speaking, and when my prayers take a little longer to get answered than I had originally expected, the clinic lets me take out their garbage and restock the paper towel dispenser for a little change. The doctors try to push those trial packs on me, but I always tell them that trial packs don’t put hot meals in my stomach.”
“So are you saying I should pray, or go to the clinic for medicines instead?”
He had me in a tough spot. I had been given a lot of medicines from doctors before, and they did work pretty well, until the clinic had to shut down for a while, and I had to learn to live without them. It was hard, but I made it through, thanks to prayer. When the clinic reopened I didn’t need the medicines at all, just the money they would give me for my janitorial work.
“I guess either some praying, or some medicines, or a combination of both would be good for you,” I said. I wish I could have been more helpful to him, but at the end of the day, people just have this sad private pain that is impossible for anyone else to access. That’s exactly why I get so excited about Heaven and its promises.
“The more I think about it,” said Moany, “the more I realize how much I wanted that damn dog in the window. I don’t know why I couldn’t be honest with myself.”
I wanted to respond, but thought there was a good chance that my words would not have been kind ones, so I started looking at the river, just watching the trash swirl around. When I turned back to look at Moany again, I was surprised to see that he’d taken a knife out from his pants. I thought there was only about a fifty percent chance that he was going to use it to murder me, given how little I had, but I didn’t want to offend him, so I got up from the couch and casually pretended that an insect had bitten me under my jeans. But then Moany just kind of dragged the knife across his own throat, until he bled so much that he lost his balance and fell off the couch and onto the rocky bank. It was all over quickly. I really hope that was the most nonsensational way to tell you about the death of Moany. It was a surprising moment for me, and I wanted to make you feel my surprise, but not to the point that you thought I enjoyed talking about it. It was a terrible thing to see.
I buried Moany and the knife behind some shrubs that were growing along the bank. I really didn’t know what to think. I had just met this man about an hour before, and we had had a nice conversation, and now here I was throwing the last of the topsoil over his bald head because his bandanna had come off in the fall. I began a prayer over his grave, a long and sweet one, because I thought that Moany, especially because he was able to admit his desire for the dog, deserved to get to Heaven. About three quarters of the way through the prayer, though, I got this spooky feeling, and I decided to stop, because the last thing I wanted was for Moany to wake up one fine morning in a place that he never wanted to be at all. Some people are scared of Heaven, and you have to respect that.
I tried to go about my day as I normally would: I cooked a modest breakfast, replayed all the positive memories from my life, and continued to list everything I was thankful for. I considered another bath in the river, but didn’t feel like disrobing again, and besides, the morning had only grown colder since Moany’s demise, so I settled for just rinsing the blood off my hands. After I dried them on my bandana, I got back on the couch and tried to take my mind off the image of Moany’s empty eyes just staring at the dirt over him. I knew his brain was not getting oxygen anymore, but for some reason, I really believed that his eyes could still see. Before falling asleep for an afternoon nap, I was finally able to formulate my New Years resolutions. They were:1. Bathe more frequently.
2. Establish better relationships with people.
3. Spend less time on the couch.
I don’t want you to think that Moany had a negative effect on my life. And I don’t want you to think that it was significant that Moany’s death happened on New Year’s Day. Actually, looking at it one way, although the relationship hadn’t been given time to develop, I had already made a good start on keeping my second resolution. Really, all I mean to say is that Moany’s death was certainly sad, but I was sure it didn’t have any symbolic meaning or anything terrible like that. To the living, death doesn’t bring symbols when it comes, it just brings death. But I also don’t want to suggest that his death was meaningless, as some might argue. It might have been meaningless, in the grand scheme of things, but even now I find it hard to refer to Moany’s sudden death that way. I’ll say it this way: the meaning of Moany’s death has yet to become clear to me, but I know one day it will.
When I woke up from my nap, I heard a man calling to me from the bridge.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I said. During all my years I lived under the bridge, I found that it was never a bad idea to respond in this way.
“I am the mayor and I want to speak with you,” he said.
It isn’t everyday that you get to meet a mayor, so I climbed up the embankment and met him on the bridge. He wore a suit and tie, but covered his face with a bandana—on account of the dust, he said—and spoke to me from behind it. Next to him sat a magnificent dog, and I immediately thought of the dog in the window. It might have been how well-behaved this dog was, or it might have been the fact that Moany’s death was still fresh in my mind. It would have been an incredible coincidence if the same dog that Moany had seen in the window was not only now owned by the city mayor, but was also standing before me, in all its glory, so soon after Moany’s death.
After I introduced myself, I asked about the dog. “That is a beautiful dog,” I said. “I wonder how long you’ve had him.”
“Several years,” the mayor said.
“Oh,” I said. That just about settled it. It wasn’t the same dog, unless the mayor was a liar, and I don’t think that he was, given how upstanding he appeared. But even if the mayor were a liar, I realized that it still might not have been the same dog. You might call this some sort of epiphany on my part.
“Are you a citizen of this country?” asked the mayor.
I nodded yes.
“Are you a resident of this state?”
Again I nodded yes, but was less sure.
“And you live full-time in this county?”
I nodded again.
“Are you happy with the life you lead in this city?”
I shrugged. “I had fun downtown on New Year’s Eve.”
“Do you know I’m running for reelection in the spring?”
I nodded no.
“Do you know why I think you should vote for me?”
Again I nodded no.
“Prepare for my stump speech,” he said.
“I have a couch down there,” I said. “I don’t own it, but I think of it as mine, and I would be a lot more comfortable listening to you if I could sit on it.”
He agreed, and we walked down the embankment together. I held on to his arm out of politeness, because he was pretty old, and because, as I’ve said, the decline was surprisingly steep. When I was good and settled on the couch, I told him I was ready. He gave me his stump speech. It was like a prayer, a prayer better than any one I could have dreamed up, even if I had been given all the time in the world. I pledged my vote to him then and there. As repayment for listening to his speech, the mayor agreed to help me unbury Moany, just to
see if his dog had any reaction to his corpse. But after all our digging, we found Moany’s grave empty, and I realized with joy that he’d been called home to Heaven. Then, wouldn’t you know it, right there under the Okeh River Bridge, the mayor gave me a job in his reelection campaign, where I was paid to stand behind him at his rallies, smiling a wide, mostly genuine smile and representing a hopeful, new kind of voter. After he was reelected, I had his ear for the first part of his new term, and made sure that the New Year’s celebration that year was even more elaborate than the one before it. I want to end this positively, on my uplifting time with the mayor, because I know that these kinds of moments are the only things people remember from the stories that they hear. I want to leave you feeling good. But however you feel, good or bad, for some reason, right now, I feel the need to tell you that, selfish as it might seem, the most important reason why I am telling this is because I want you to remember me.
The Buddy
After school, Robert and Scott would wait at the bus stop with a crowd of other kids.
Sometimes Robert made lists of things that he should never say to Scott. One item that appeared regularly was, “I love you.”
Robert was not handsome, but Scott was.
The truck was equipped with a noisy exhaust and painted bright red. A loudspeaker jutted from just above the windshield.
“You’re a comedian,” Scott would say to Robert. “Come on, be funny.”
Robert was out walking the dusty path that ran beside Amoring Lake. He carried a sharpened stick, spearing anything he found clinging to the fence line.
He would have given anything to drive such a loud and threatening machine.
Although he did pushups before bed each night, Robert’s build remained small—with the exception of his chest, where his fatty little breasts swayed under his shirt as he walked.
Scott was skating around in the gas station parking lot, jumping steps and abandoned tires. A younger boy sat watching him on the curb, eating an ice cream cone.
“What’s up, Robjob?” Scott said.
“Just gonna try and buy cigarettes.”
Scott pointed to the boy at the curb, who had chocolate running down his pale arm. “This is Stewart, my little brother.”
He spoke in a reedy, frog-mouthed way, telling Scott dirty things about girls that happened to walk by. “Go put this banana you know where,” he would say, or “I gotta put this tongue somewhere soon or I’ll choke on it.”
Stewart giggled, and held out a dripping hand. “Puterthere,” he said. He giggled again.
Robert spied a piece of animal feces in the weeds. He smeared his right hand in it and bent low to shake hands.
A throng of kids stood at the bus stop beneath a budding elm tree. Robert had an erection—born of nothing—that had been with him since fifth period.
Stewart threw the half-eaten cone away and looked uncertainly at his brother. Scott was doubled-over.
“Robjob is the nastiest!” Scott howled. “The nastiest! Come hang out for a while.”
On the south side of the intersection, across from the lake, stood the Shell station, where the driver of the truck was rumored to work.
He stood and waited with his hands clasped inconspicuously across his crotch, occasionally smiling at Scott. Scott stood anxiously on his skateboard, snapping his bubblegum.
The three of them walked down Fairfield in the late afternoon sun. Stewart ran ahead chasing butterflies, his curls flopping.
“Puterthere,” he said, making the frog voice. “Puterthere.”
Scott’s house was dusty and cluttered and smelled of overripe produce. There were two cramped bedrooms, and in one of them, Scott shared a bunk bed with Stewart.
They saw the truck down the way. It sat idling in an intersection, behind a bent stop sign. Suddenly the truck roared and peeled out, spraying dust and gravel up onto the hoods of other vehicles. The boys around Robert began to lose control. “Oh, shit,” they cried. “Holy shit.”
Scott picked up a crusty-looking book off the floor, entitled The History of Philosophy. He thumbed through it. “Lots of cool ideas in there,” he said. Robert asked to borrow the book, but Scott squinched up his eyes and said, “Nah.”
“Hey guys,” said the voice from within the truck. Some of the boys nodded. Others, unable to hide their enthusiasm, jumped and waved. The tinted window slid down.
Scott showed Robert his father’s collection of dirty videotapes. Then they went to the backyard and scooped dirt into an old pie tin. They tried to serve it to Stewart, telling him it was chocolate.
He was neither old nor particularly young, and he held a PA in his hand and spoke into it. “Hey,” he said, the nasal voice full of static, his finger stabbing through the open window. Robert turned to find that the driver had targeted Scott.
“My brother doesn’t know a damn thing,” Scott said.
Then they placed Stewart in the middle of the trampoline, and bounced him until he lost his footing and rolled off onto the concrete.
“You hang around the Shell station sometimes?” said the voice. “With that kid brother?”
“Sure,” Scott said, “My brother’s a dumbshit. Follows me everywhere.”
“When I was his age I had already run away from home, twice,” Scott said. The afternoon passed, and Scott rushed Robert out the side yard when he heard the garage door open.
“You need a lift home?” the driver said. The man’s expression said that it did not matter one way or another.
Robert was still standing under the tree when the truck made a second pass. The passenger door popped open, and Scott motioned to him from within. Robert sprinted to the truck and dove inside.
“If it’s on your way.”
“Sure it’s on my way.”
“I’m not allowed to have friends over,” he said. “My dad’s only rule. Stewart knows I’ll kill him if he tells.”
The driver reached a hand across to Robert. “Name’s Clay,” he said. “We were halfway home when Scott said you’d kill someone if you never got to ride in this truck.”
At lunchtime, it was raining and the students huddled under the eaves in clusters, leaning against the stucco walls.
“Saturday’s the car wash,” a girl named Julie said. She was a cheerleader.
“I’ll be there,” Scott said. “One way or another.”
“It’s a fundraiser,” Julie said. “We need new uniforms.”
He drove intensely, weaving in and out of traffic. He slammed on the brakes and screamed epithets with a smile.
“How old are you, Clay?” Robert said.
“How old are you?” Clay said.
“We’re both thirteen,” Robert said.
“Just double that,” Clay said. “Piece a cake.”
Each day, Clay would pick them up from school and drive to Scott’s house.
“Scooter over here made me.” Clay nudged Scott. “Said you were the funniest guy he knew.”
“Naw,” Robert said. “Paul,” he said. “Paul Spielman’s a lot funnier than me. He can do that thing with his pinky.”
Clay smoked indoors, helped himself to the liquor cabinet, and made himself at home. At 4:00 each afternoon, Robert was politely asked to leave.
“Come on,” Scott said. “Do the frog.”
“I like jokes,” Clay said.
“Robert doesn’t tell jokes,” Scott said. “He does voices.”
Clay dropped Robert off at the corner of Fairfield and Lupine with a pat on the back and a promise to see him again.
“Why?” Robert would ask.
Clay and Scott were smiling, waiting. Robert glanced out the window. A very old woman in a white suit was slumped behind the wheel of her Buick.
Robert caught a fever. He thrashed uselessly in his bed. His mother entered his room and said that he was blessed to have a home and a family, especially a mother who cared for him. “Some mothers throw their kids out on the street,” she warned.
“Hey man,
” Clay would say. “Scott’s my best buddy. Best buddies gotta have their time together.” Then he would mess Scott’s blond hair.
Robert became the frog. “I want to unbutton that blouse and show grandma what a good grandson I am,” he croaked. “Young or old, it don’t matter to me.”
“Saw you chilling in that big-ass truck,” said Julie.
“Yeah, Clay and I are buddies,” Scott said. “Went over to my house yesterday, watched a couple movies. Clay’s into shit I never even knew existed.”
Robert started a rumor at the middle school, that Scott and Clay were lovers. It spread quickly.
“It makes sense,” Robert heard a lanky basketball player say as they passed each other. “It makes sense because the truck is so high, nobody can see what they do inside it.”
Something in My Eye: Stories Page 10