Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1

by Derrick Brown

  “Well, we got five-and-a-half more hours. I’m sure you’ll think of something,”

  he replies and pulls two Pacifico beers out of the fridge from the dozen hiding behind the plasma.

  “Let’s see. I got a whole bunch of strange stuff. I could tell you about how to roll your last cigarette for a stranger in Prague, the importance of not listening to sad music on the way to the airport, how to punch someone in the throat with a lollipop stick or how to get rid of a hickey right above your ass.”

  “Great. I get tons of those from vacuuming while drunk. Let’s hear it.”

  “I could tell you now but you’d lose it. You should only tell people useful things right before you split. People only remember the beginning and the end.”

  She flips the tone to electric piano on the control panel of her keyboard.

  “This may seem off-topic. Do you like my name, Scott?”

  “Why?”

  “Every time I wash my hands, I see it in the mirror on my name tag and it just seems like a strike-less, meandering, forgettable name. Linda. Linnnduh.

  No guy screams out ‘Oh Linda’ during intercourse and doesn’t secretly wish they were screaming out ‘Oh Cassandra’ or ‘Oh Moesha.’

  “Ya. But at least you’re not a Stacy or Destiny. Those names force you into a life of stripping. It’s true, you don’t really look like a Linda. Maybe a Gaynell or a Pat.”

  “Scott, I’m serious. The last name is even more boring.”

  “What was your last name, Boxlightner?”

  “Boxworthy. My father never sat us down and said, “Get in the game, kid, and fight. You’re a Boxworthy. You are fuckin’ worthy of many boxes and you must know this. In the days of yore, when other Lords were receiving gold, frankincense and myrrh… you’d get a big brown fuckin’ box and this is what makes our heritage special.”

  “That’s funny. Kinda.”

  “I know. Do you think I’m boring?”

  “To be honest, I think your name is boring. But you’re not boring. Especially a couple months ago when we got it on in the small room. Missionary on the metal table was a bit boring but other than that, I recall it as being pretty spur-of-the-moment and passionate. I still have bite marks. I tell people it’s the Irish Setter.”

  There was a long pause which was acceptable ‘cause there was music.

  The scrambling of dog claws on cages and the hissing pace of cats became a tin melody with the sounds of the keyboard doing its soft digital thing.

  Scott leaned across the counter towards her.

  “Do you want to go pose the animals in the freezer? We could make it a contest.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “How about Dance Party USA?”

  “What is that?”

  “Come with me, Moesha.”

  They both coat the entire lobby floor with an inch-thick coat of water, then release all the dogs for a fifteen-minute romp while cranking ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ over the house stereo. They then put the frenzied dogs back in their cages and allow a fifteen-minute saunter for the kitties to the tune of ‘Mr. Bojangles.’ Cats love and always will love Sammy Davis Jr. for reasons that are self-evident.

  Scott catches his breath and grabs Linda to set her on his lap. “I love seeing these sick animals romping like freshmen, but it is so against hospital policy.

  You know you could get fired, Linda?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “I think it’s worth it. Did you notice the dogs go crazy and slobber their brains out, crashing into walls like coked-out roller derby superstars, while the cats, during their shift, kind of walk about like Donald Trump in a youth hostel with a look on their faces like, ‘Seriously, this is bullshit.”

  “Sure.”

  Scott moves to kiss her while Linda stays as still as wax. Linda has locked her gaze at a spot on the floor. Scott touches her brown, unstyled hair.

  “Hey. Heeey. What’s the matter?”

  Linda speaks low.

  “I think animals have souls. I’m not gonna get too crazy about it. I can’t prove that anything has a soul. It’s just what I have chosen to believe after looking these living things in the eye day after day; you know, healing them, helping them die.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  Linda starts breathing like the customer. Scott held her close to calm her down.

  “It’s O.K., babe. It’s O.K.”

  He looks her in the eye and sees a woman daydreaming in a place he could never visit.

  The feeling she had was much greater than the boredom she spoke of. It had choked the language from her.

  She mumbles, “I wonder if when you name something, then it becomes real, or memorable. I wonder what a name does to a living thing.”

  Scott leans a mop across the white. “You sure do think of a lot of stuff when you ain’t got shit to do. I brought you the good mop. Are you all right?”

  “I just feel like talking. Like trying to figure this thing out.”

  “What thing? Are you sick? Do you need help with something? I can get just about anything pharmaceutical from Tijuana.”

  “No. I don’t need you to solve. I just need you to listen. I can take care of things.”

  If Scott’s brain were noisier there would be a ding sound.

  “Are you depressed. Are you quitting? Are you pregnant?”

  Linda bit her teeth. She did not cry.

  “I was.”

  The air became twelve thousand pounds.

  Scott was a logical man. He had a slow tongue and waited to speak until his chest stopped feeling funny. He wanted to say why didn’t you tell me? He wanted to say how dare you do this without me, but he knew he didn’t know her well enough and probably would not love her.

  “I read that animals abort spontaneously in stressful circumstances, without the grief that they show when a grown child dies.”

  Linda swabs at the tile.

  “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t know what to say. I’m fine.”

  “Was it scary?”

  “No. Yes. I remember writing on my hand I can hardly help dogs die, how can I help a human live?”

  Scott stood his mop at attention in the bucket and took a deep breath.

  “God, I feel dumb right now. I feel like…like I want to take that from you. I know I can’t. I know I can’t do that. I just feel like sorry is such a dumb thing to say. I’ll just stop talking. Should I hold you for a second?”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “I want to.”

  They held each other that evening, standing among the hairballs and dirty mop water of the animal shelters lobby floor. A scene you will never see when you go to bring in your poodle for a vaccination. A scene that plays out differently in different places on different days throughout the world. People with different names wondering about the same things, while creatures with no names run around the wilderness, the air and the sea, loathing capture, needing no legacy or tombstone.

  Here two forgettable, broken creatures stood, holding each other until the dogs, cats, birds and snakes laid down in their cages, held still for a moment, their names locked around their necks, watching a moment unfold, unable to comprehend it…but remembering all of it.

  SGT. PEDERSON WOULD LIKE

  A WORD WITH YOU

  Put your mouth in the lean and rest, sucker and bite down on this sweet pill of misery and wonder known as my fartbox of a life. Lock your beady little eyeballs on these pages and suckle on the empty tits of losing, you ungrateful Toilets. Read this closely and learn, buttwads. Your days of being ate up are over. You can win.

  You don’t have to live a life of total black darkness. You stay alert, you stay alive, soldier. Let me tell you somethin.’ I was born for two things.

  Defense of my country, loving my family and for pleasuring ladies. Not so successful with the latter. I’m a big enough man to admit that. I’m starting to think women don’t understand Sgt. Pederson. I was kn
own as The Midwestern Love Tank. No one actually called me that cause it was too long to say, but it’s understood. You can learn from my mistakes. I have been born again. Learn from me privates, learn from me. A happy soldier is a worse warrior, but a smarter citizen. Put your shoe to your ear and Get Smart or die like a dummy.

  I’m starting to think Sgt. Pederson shouldn’t write or talk in the third person, but he can’t help it. Third person helps reveal some of Sgt. Pederson’s insecurities.

  He knows when the insecurity started. His English teacher told him to ‘write it all down’ to help relieve the pain. O.K. This is me writing it down.

  This is where the trouble began.

  My last girlfriend came over for a little Valentine’s Day hob-nobbing. It was February 14th. I really liked her, so what?

  To be honest, I was sprung. She had a whole kit. Candles and smelly candles, flowers, crèmes and all kinds of useless stuff prefixed with either the word butter or cocoa or tea tree. None of it edible. Isn’t that dumb?

  I was surprised to be actually relaxed with the whole frou-frou thing. I tried to get into it. Just kidding.

  Sgt. Pederson thinks overt home decor and perfumed bathing supplies is a sign of weakness. BUT! I went with the flow. I shaved. I trimmed my back pubes and showered with a rag. I even wrote a poem. You damn skippy I ain’t showing it to you though, turd.

  So she broke out a bottle of somethin’ and looked at me lovely and seductively.

  I thought we were on the same wavelength. I tried to do the same.

  We were both orderly and liked to feel good. Sex feels good.

  We should like sex…a lot. It’s just a back massage for your interior so what’s the big deal.

  Turns out most female contraptions don’t always work that way.

  This is where our plot goes all squirrelly.

  Her hips rocked toward me like she was hot stuff.

  She was chubby and she was my lady.

  “Honey,” she said, “loooook what I got.”

  “What is that? Shampoo?”

  “Nooooo dear. It’s something else. It’s…lotion. Do you know what that means?”

  “Um. You damn right I do, baby.”

  “You do, you big bear? Tell me.”

  Her voice was sliding into a comfortable purr.

  This kitty needed Daddy’s catnip. I didn’t know she was naughty. It’s always the nice girls. Pastors’ daughters, union people, people with library cards.

  “You want me to say it out loud?” I said.

  “Yesssss.” I could smell the slut venom flitting in her jeans. “Ssssay it.”

  “O.K …you want me to give you a…backstage pass?”

  “What?” I could tell she was playing frisky and kind of wanted me to say it again.

  “You dirty bird. You want ol’ Brer Rabbit to thump on your briar patch, dontcha, dontcha?”

  “Oh my God.”

  Her jaw fell open like an audience at a catastrophe. I thought she was wowed by my knowledge, I thought to myself “I don’t know much about this role playing shit but I will continue in this sneaky little poopie chute love game.” Not giving away too much. I said, “Baby, I been dreaming of dipping your doughnut hole since day one. You are a kinky broad. This is why I think I’m falling in love with you.” She looked like she was gonna cry.

  “You-are-the-grossest pervert in all of Fort Sill. When I told you I was anal, I meant I was organized.” Tears.

  “Baby. You know that’s a lie. Private Addington is way grosser than me. He dressed like C-3PO and did the cottage cheese thing to a crippled Weimariner.

  I ain’t into that creative shit. You know me. Baby?”

  “You…I can’t…Ya know, you think you really know someone. Michael. Just leave and never talk to me again except to get your things. Don’t call me for at least two weeks. I don’t want to see your face.”

  Margaret shoved me into the doorway. I didn’t shove back ‘cause my buddy went to jail for breaking a plate when his wife and him got in an argument.

  Margaret and I had been together for ten months. I couldn’t touch her. It was instinct to snap a neck when someone touched me, but I fought it. She was my first real girlfriend so she deserved better. It doesn’t seem like a long time to date but it was long enough for me to cry in front of her when we watched Full Metal Jacket.

  “Wait. I wrote you a poem.” I said this when she was already in the driveway.

  I wish you could hear little sound effects in my journal. I guess I could write a little “WHAM” or a “KASLAMM” ‘cause you know, I felt that sound in my chest.

  God, I talk too much. I think I know what people mean when they say ‘be honest.’ I try and I am always wrong when I talk too much.

  No one really wants honesty or I’d tell you how ugly you are, but just on the outside, or you’re fat but I’d still do you.

  I’m trying to say that we aren’t perfect and imperfection is sexy but everything comes out stupid. I said too much.

  Man, what a horrible night that was. I was so ready to be loving, caring, and to work her trench into an overweight, sweaty Valentine’s mess. I’m talking total romance. “The best line of the poem can be considered foreplay,” my teacher once said. I’ll sneak you one of the lines from Margaret’s poem wrote “Your bathing suit area is a clock, Margaret. For it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Isn’t that nice? I’m talkin’ about love and beach stuff.

  Look at me.

  I treat love really well. How love treats you is a whole different bag of soup.

  Love is something that will take you by the throat if you don’t take it by the throat first and hang on until it croaks in your clutches. If it bleeds all over you, then the blood gets on your fingers and you lose your grip on your chokehold and then you gotta stab it in the face.

  Maybe that’s a bad analogy.

  How about this: Love is like humping. If you can avoid it all your life, you’ll be all right, but once you dare to have a morsel of its slippery delight, then you always want it and you’re a walking time bomb without it.

  I can’t tell you to avoid it though. You have been designed to find the grapes of love and suckle them. That’s God, ya’all. Just don’t fall as hard as I did. Focus on your craft, your work. Focusing on love makes you a looney bird.

  Ladies, this goes for you too. Get promoted. Work your ass off and you’ll get too busy to be heartbroken. I was working on getting my E-6 when all this went down. I got a letter from CentCom that said “Attention Sergeant Pederson; In order to be considered for Staff Sergeant promotion you must successfully complete at least five units of college credit in order to be fit to blah blah blah.”

  Great. Civilians. School again. The only class that didn’t conflict with Pathfinder school was creative writing.

  I was very disinterested, to say the least, until Private Farkas told me about a writer named Ernest Something who blew his brains out with a shotgun. That touched me and saddened me. I didn’t even know he was dead. I had seen all the movies including “Ernest Goes To Camp” and the vacation one and thought I’d go as a sort of homage.

  The syllabus said Creative Writing 101 and I was like, ‘shit, that sounds a little advanced. I am probably like a Creative Writing 5 or 6 kind of guy.’

  The last creative thing I did was to disassemble and clean an M-16-A1, air-cooled, gas-operated, semi-and fully automatic weapon blindfolded while singing the theme to the hit T.V. show ‘Family Ties.’ Oh, and I can eat all the cream out of a red coconut Zinger, but that’s it.

  The first day I felt very out of place. You see, there are a few reasons why a guy joins the Army:

  1. You’re from a place like Gary, Indiana. ‘Nuff said.

  2. You’re stupid and couldn’t get a scholarship.

  3. You had asshole parents and the Army gives you a proud new family to belong to.

  4. You like to shower naked with grown men of many nations.

  I think I’m number 2 or 4. I’m k
idding. Most kids in this class look like they could star in their own reality show called 67-Sided Dice Unbound, My Life With Dungeons and Dragons.

  There was this one Asian girl in class that was giving me the kind of look that you can’t see, but you can feel. She was kinda fat like Margaret and I liked it.

  We had to write something the first day. I…wrote about Margaret and how much I missed her. It sucked.

  That Asian girl wrote about revenge and some weirdo stuff. It was beautiful.

  Her name was Julie Gish or Dish or Chin or Nguyen. She wrote in her piece,

  “I have abandoned the factory of men.

  I have re-charged the seamstresses’ nightmares.

  Crawling up the lighthouse.

  I have the sailors all hanging

  by gold threads with sand in their pockets.

  A desperate insomniac whispers your skin

  into a bed and sleeps like a tick.

  Your blood is locked in its mouth.

  Sunlight is always hitting me so I must speak to hit back.

  This is me, darling.

  I take what I want.”

  My first thought was “Holy shit.”

  My second thought was “I’d do her.”

  My third thought was maybe she could tutor me, to write a poem that would help me win Margaret back.

  I’ll skip all the boring stuff. She said she’d help me. Julie asked what I did for a living. I said I kill things when the government asks me to. I lead the guard duty for the motor pool; I clean artillery muzzles for night ops and heavy drops and run operations on the firing range for the Mark 19. How about you?

  She said, “I party.”

  She smiled slow and wide like she had won. She trained me for about 4 weeks.

  Taught me about details, craft and control. We met every day and she gave me books by Faulkner, Vonnegut and Miller. I read the back of every single one and I learned a lot.

  I tried to notice things. Tiny things.

  Eyelashes. A lady’s strut. A dog’s snot. The face of a kid denied ice cream before he starts bawling. She showed me how to hold it all. She “delivered me into the details,” she said.

  She was smart and sad as fuck. She knew exactly how to say things. There was the hurt and she was in it and showing all of it.