Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  “Yeah,” Harper nods. “My job here is done.”

  My job here is done. Fantastic! In many ways, Harper is my perfect girlfriend, although I’ll never tell her that. I call her out of the blue, and she drives an hour from Bloomington to Empire Ridge just to have sex with me. And now she’s leaving. No talking about our feelings, about my father—none of that. She knows what I want, maybe what I need, and she gives it to me.

  Harper stops halfway to the car. “Hank, can we talk for a second?”

  Looks like I spoke too soon. “Sure, what’s up?”

  “I’ve met someone.”

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “It could be,” Harper says.

  “I know him?”

  “I don’t think you do. The name Logan Yancey ring any bells?”

  “Not a one.”

  “He used to live in Empire Ridge. We were childhood friends, best friends actually. He and I were an item at Prep, before I transferred over to The Ridge. He moved to Michigan the middle of our freshman year. I went and visited him later that summer.”

  “Oh, that guy,” I say. “He was your first.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Harper says. “How’d you know?”

  “Harp,” I say. “You and I have spent way too many loose-lipped, drunken nights together.”

  “I guess we have, haven’t we?” Harper smiles. “The point being, Logan and I want to start things up again.”

  “Good for you,” I say. “It’s like a goddamn fairy tale.”

  “Yeah, it is like a goddamn fairy tale, isn’t it?” Harper moves her hand between us, pointing to herself and then to me. “But this has got to stop.”

  I smile. “I think we both knew we couldn’t do this forever.”

  I kiss Harper full on the lips. She kisses me back. We kiss for awhile. My hands behave.

  “I’ll call you when I’m back in Bloomington,” I say, closing Harper’s car door behind her.

  Harper rolls down her window and rolls her eyes. “No you won’t.”

  I smile. “You know me pretty damn well, don’t you?”

  “Hank, I’ll never know you well. But do me a favor, will you?”

  “Anything.”

  “Find someone special. You deserve it.”

  I tap the roof of her car. “You know I can’t promise anything.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “See you, Harper.”

  She smiles. “No you won’t.”

  Harper pulls out of the driveway as I walk back into the house. It’s Friday evening, and no one is home. I haven’t seen Mom in months. Jack is who-knows-where, most likely spending the night at a friend’s house. I grab a half-eaten bag of microwave popcorn off the kitchen counter.

  The old tan sectional sits in our basement, the arms and backrests indented from years of loving abuse. We’ve had this sectional for going on eleven years now, but its components have been reunited back into a sectional only since we moved in January. The multiple windows and bookshelves of the old house necessitated the division of the sectional into three pieces—a long couch, a loveseat, and a convertible. The convertible used to be positioned so Dad could lie down, prop his head up on a pillow, and watch the television just above his feet. From here Dad doled out his nightly ice cream stick, patted Jack to sleep on his belly, and then fell asleep to the melodic lullabies of local news broadcasters, late night talk show hosts, and of course, Mexican boxers on Univision. El Mundoooo del Box!

  I remembered when Jack got too big for Dad’s belly. He was two years old. Dad said, “Stop wiggling.” This went on for a couple nights. Then Jack slid up and over to the top of the couch’s backrest and propped his little body against the wall. They ended up on that couch every night—Dad on bottom, Jack on top. The night after Dad died, Jack fell asleep on the backrest. Nobody had the courage to sleep on the couch with him.

  I turn on the television and start flipping through the channels. I hear the front door open and close. Mom is home.

  I hear giggling. “Tommmmm.”

  Tom Shelden was Mom’s high school sweetheart. They broke up when Mom left for college, back in like ’64 or ’65. Tom came to Dad’s funeral. Jeanine and I encouraged Mom to call Tom a couple months later. We told her, “It’ll be good for you to get out.”

  Apparently, I’ve missed a few months.

  More giggling. I turn down the volume on the television. I hear the clink of ice being dropped in glasses. Pieces of the conversation:

  “Watch those hands…”

  “…more to drink.”

  “Don’t tease me like that…”

  “Come on, Debbie…”

  “I’ll be right up…”

  Feet scurrying up a flight of the stairs. And the giggling. The fucking giggling! This isn’t happening. I can’t turn up the volume on the TV, can’t let them know I’m here. But I can’t listen to this.

  A door shutting. Quiet. Thank God.

  Thump.

  What was that?

  Thump, thump…

  No. Fuck no.

  Thump, thump, thump…

  Jesus fucking Christ no.

  “Ohhhhhh…”

  My dad has been buried for six months, and his wife is already sharing their bed with another man, a balding, chain-smoking piece of shit who wears spandex shorts and gets his dates liquored up on vodka gimlets.

  Thump, thump, thump…

  Six fucking months. My mother is a goddamn whore. A goddamn, drunk, fucking whore.

  “Ohhhhhh…”

  I reach for the phone on the coffee table. I dial my apartment.

  The phone rings. The thumping and the moaning don’t stop. Dear fucking God, I hope Dad is in heaven at this very moment, watching all this and fucking the brains out of some smoking hot pussy like Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe, or Dorothy Stratton.

  He picks up after six rings. “Hatch here.”

  “About fucking time.”

  “What’s up, Fitzy? You back in Bloomington yet?”

  “I will be. Meet me over at Brink’s and Cash’s place. I’m coming in hot from Empire Ridge. Let’s get an early start on Little Five weekend.”

  “Fuck that. I got no interest in dying tonight.”

  “Come on, you don’t have to get high. Just have a couple beers with me and make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I can’t be your babysitter tonight, Fitzy.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dad got my grades,” Hatch says. “I’m in deep shit if I don’t turn things around.”

  “Then fuck you!” I say, slamming the phone down on the receiver. I hear the stairs creak.

  “Hank, what’s wrong?”

  Mom stands halfway down the staircase. She’s wearing a sheer robe I’ve never seen before, her face painted in equal shades of relief and embarrassment.

  “I thought I heard a noise, and look what we have here. My baby’s home.” Her smile seems forced to me. Hell, everything about her seems fake right now. “I’ve been so worried about you. This weekend’s your birthday. What do you want to—”

  I raise my hand. “Shut up.”

  “What?”

  “I said shut up.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that!”

  “I heard you, Mom. Upstairs—I heard all of it.”

  “All of what?”

  “Listening to it was bad enough. I’m sure as hell not going to rehash the play-by-play for your benefit.”

  “If you’re going to presume to lecture me about my sex life, Hank—”

  I stand up, pointing my finger in her face. “Why can’t I presume? That fucker upstairs is the second guy you’ve ever slept with in your entire life. I had more sexual encounters than you by the time I was ten years old.”

  “What’
s that supposed to mean?”

  I still can’t believe no one has fucking connected the dots with Uncle Mitch. “I’m just saying that…that…”

  “That your views on intimacy are more mature than mine?”

  The introspective high school guidance counselor makes her long overdue appearance. I’m not in the mood to see her.

  “Yeah, Mom, that’s it. I’m mature enough. Mature enough to know that fucking an old high school flame when the love of your life hasn’t even been in the ground for six months is wrong.”

  The color in Mom’s face drains away. I could have hurt her less if I had just punched her in the stomach. She collapses onto the couch, her face in her hands, wailing.

  Chapter forty-three

  In the light of day, the drive between Empire Ridge and Bloomington is among the most scenic in the state. Southern Indiana is where the Ice Age stalled three hundred thousand years ago, the glaciers that rolled the northern half of the state and most of the Midwest flat and nondescript retreating back into the Great Lakes and Canada. You’d think people could get past the stereotypes. Corn rows as far as the eye can see. Republicans as numerous as mold spores. A basketball goal in every driveway or backyard, or better yet nailed to the side of a barn, hovering over a dusty court of game-saving shots. And yet, even after three hundred thousand years, nobody outside the state seems to know southern Indiana exists. The rolling knobs. The limestone caves carved out by underground streams. The valleys of sumac, maple, gingko, and sweet gum with their autumn hues of magenta, gold, orange, and peach. And Indiana University, one of the most liberal campuses in the country.

  Not disputing basketball goals. We’re fucknuts crazy about that sport.

  I stop at a gas station in Nashville for some malt liquor and cigarettes. With its own “Little Nashville Opry,” Nashville, Indiana, fashions itself as the next best thing to the country music capital, never mind there are six Nashvilles in America larger than the one in Indiana. John Mellencamp’s home isn’t too far from the city limits, but Nashville continues to hang its star on its quaint storefronts and the fact Theodore Clement Steele died here.

  T. C. Steele was once apparently an American Impressionist painter of some repute. Whatever. I’ve seen Steele’s “House of the Singing Winds” oil on canvas, and it’s no American Fool album.

  I pull into the apartment complex just off Kirkwood Avenue. My breath smells of malted hops and cigarettes from the Mickey’s Big Mouths and Marlboro Lights I’ve been inhaling since Nashville. Brinks and Cash’s place is on the first floor, steps away from where I park. I can already hear the music. Predictably, it’s “Sugar Magnolia” by the Grateful Dead. I just walk in. Cash is sitting on the couch, a bag of half-eaten Cool Ranch Doritos in his lap.

  “Cash, what the fuck you up to, buddy?”

  “Holy shit!” Cash stands up and sends the bag of tortilla chips flying off his lap. He bounds across the room, grabbing me in an inebriated bear hug. “Hey, Brinks, we got ourselves a guest!”

  Neil Brinkley is Cash’s half-brother. He and I worked together at the box factory last summer. Brinks is a year younger than me, two years younger than Cash. Whereas a night with Cash is guaranteed to give you a good buzz, a night with Cash and Brinks together is guaranteed to give you an out-of-body experience. Brinks has a bad habit of slipping me LSD wrapped in rice paper during concerts. And by slipping me, I mean Brinks says to me, “Hey, Fitzpatrick, want to try this?” and I say, “Sure.”

  Brinks screams from the kitchen. “Get the fuck out of here!” He walks into the family room, a slice of pizza in one hand, a small glass pipe in the other. He hands me the pipe. “Light her up, Fitzpatrick!”

  I pull my lighter out of my pocket and raise the pipe to my lips. “You sure, Brinks?”

  He nods. “Take a big fucking hit off that bitch. I just packed her.”

  I raise the well-packed pipe to eye level, a half-dime sized nest of pungent marijuana just beyond the end of my nose. Judging by the smell of it—that strong hemp odor of sage, rope, and grass clippings mixed together—this isn’t the kind of weed I should be fucking around with. I place my finger on the hole at the end of the pipe, lighting a corner of the nest rather than the whole thing to leave some of the marijuana still green for my friends. I inhale the smoke and start to feel it inside my mouth and in my nose. I release my finger from the hole at the other end, at the same time sucking hard. The smoke surges down into my lungs. Like needles on my throat, inside my chest. I cough.

  “Ewwwhuuuughhhh!”

  I’m lightheaded. I bend over, handing the pipe to Cash. Each hard, guttural cough intensifies the buzz.

  I cough maybe a dozen times.

  Brinks pats me on the back. “Dude, take it easy. We got all night.” He hands me a tall ceramic cup of an unidentified steaming liquid.

  “What is this?”

  “Some hot tea with honey. It’ll keep your throat from hurting too bad. And with tokes like that, your throat’s gonna be hurting pretty bad.”

  “Thanks.” I take a sip. The tea feels good on my throat, but there’s something not right about its flavor. Even with the honey, the taste is, for lack of a better descriptor, dirty.

  Before I can think on it some more, the pipe is back to me. Another cough fit hits me.

  “Jesus, Hank! Brinks and I got like a half shoebox of this stuff. You don’t need to try and smoke it all at once.”

  “Fuck off, Cash!” The marijuana is doing my talking. I sip my tea.

  We continued to smoke for maybe an hour. They handed me the pipe. I coughed. I drank my tea.

  They handed me the pipe. I coughed. I drank my tea. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  We’ve repacked that goddamn bowl at least three times. Our smoke-off ends when we laugh at a Comedy Central stand-up skit so hard I swallow the teabag at the bottom of my cup.

  A piece of the teabag comes back up. I spit it into my hand. It’s brown, almost rubbery. I hold the regurgitated foreign object in the palm of my right hand, poking it with my left index finger. “What the fuck?”I say.

  Everything starts to slow down. Time means nothing. A feeling of awkward sadness overwhelms me. I’m uncomfortable, not so much overwhelmed by being sad, but rather hyper-aware of my sadness. A total fucking puddle of melancholy.

  Did I call my mom a whore today? Or did I just think it?

  When are you getting back, Dad?

  Everyone says you’re gone for good, but the joke’s over. Come home.

  “Hank?”

  “Dad?”

  A hand on my shoulder. “Uh, no.”

  I lurch up from the couch, startled. “Cash?”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “What did you give me?”

  “Relax, you’re not gonna die or nuthin. You just drank an entire cup of shroom tea. Given that I put two mushrooms in your tea and you’re holding one in your hand, I think you might have swallowed a mushroom whole.”

  Brinks drops to the floor, laughing and in tears. “See you tomorrow, Hank.”

  Chapter forty-four

  Saturday morning of Little 500 weekend. For some people, Little 500 means thirty-three teams of four riders racing relay-style for two hundred laps along a quarter-mile cinder track on identical, single-gear, coaster-brake racing bicycles with flat rubber pedals. For most, it means drinking yourself into identical, multi-substance, amnesiac comas while never making it within a mile of the race.

  Hatch tries to peel me off the couch. “Dude, get up.”

  “Where the fuck am I?”

  “At Cash’s place, and you smell like ass.”

  “Fuck off, Hatch.” I stand up. I drop my nose down into my armpit. My eyes open wide, the stench shocking me awake.

  “I think I’m getting high just standing here.” Hatch takes inventory of the room. Empty beer cans and greasy pizza boxes
frame a coffee table. In the kitchen, the odors of tobacco and pot linger over a large ashtray brimming with cigarette butts, castoff marijuana seeds and stems, and a roach we were too stoned to finish.

  “Where’s Cash and Brinks?” Hatch asks.

  “They went out for some breakfast. I don’t have much of an appetite this morning.”

  “Speaking of this morning. Happy fucking birthday!”

  I’m twenty-two years old today. Mom usually calls me to recount the hours and minutes leading up to my birth on that “cool spring night” of April 21, 1971. How I was almost an Aries. How my great-grandma Myrtle, a former bouncer, yanked me out of the nurse’s arms saying, “Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t hold my great-grandson.” How Mom was Uncle Mitch’s inorganic chemistry tutor around the time I was conceived and Mom and Dad laughed when the doctor went in with an oversized crochet needle to break Mom’s water and the needle came out with several locks of curly black Mitch-like hair wrapped around it. I can almost hear Mitch telling the story, pig-giggling while dreaming about little boys’ pubes.

  I don’t expect Mom’s birthday call. Not after yesterday. I stand up, pushing Hatch out of my way. “I’m going to go jump in the shower.”

  “Good call,” Hatch says. “Mack just got in from Tennessee. We’re supposed to meet him in an hour at the Bluebird.”

  “Mack, huh? What’s he up to?”

  “About six-nine, two-forty.”

  We started hanging out with Josh McKenna the summer before college. “Mack” is a Prepster with above-average hoop skills. A former McDonald’s High School All-American, he got a full ride to Austin Peay. He never saw the court because of injuries. Two knee surgeries have since marked his digression from a genuine All-American to a self-proclaimed one. I don’t feel too bad for Mack. He’s still on full scholarship, with an expanding closet of brand-new Nike shoes he’ll never wear because he still receives his annual allotment of gear whether or not he plays. Not to mention the mileage he continues to get from feasting on basketball groupies and the vast majority of eligible—and oftentimes ineligible—women who are into tall men.

  I make my way to the stairs, a shuffling gait that refuses to make the effort. “Mack’s pushing two-and-a-half bills?”