by J. G Hayes
I started getting nervous.
“Ahh … what?” I asked.
“Dick.”
Sean looked down at the radio’s green light and yelled to the woman and the mean-ister and the country music wrapping around the hills and hollows, “Dick dick dick dick dick!”
Then he laughed and put his left foot up on the dashboard. His legs were short and he could do that while he was driving; he always did that. He rubbed his hairy, bare left leg casually. He was wearing shorts and sneakers with no socks like me, except Sean’s sneakers didn’t smell, like mine. His body and its functions were Perfect in Every Way. I thought so, anyway.
I got very nervous.
“Ahh …”
I TOOK OFF MY Red Sox baseball cap, ran my hands through my flattop, then put my cap back on. I nonchalantly checked my look in the vanity mirror on the visor in front of me to make sure I’d gotten it straight.
I turned to Sean.
“Ahh … .wh-what do you mean?” I said loud above the rushing dirty highway air. Sean’s weren’t the kind of words that you can just forget about.
Sean smiled and slowly turned his head to me.
“That’s really what we’re talking about here, Richie,” he said, jerking his head toward the radio. He reached down between his legs and extracted his beer. He raised it to his mouth and took a long gulping swig. I watched a few drops streetlight-sparkle down his chin and plop onto his gray Tommy T-shirt, where they got instantly absorbed. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “All them religious nuts, you see ’em on cable. Those ladies wit the hussy hair and the guys wit the dyed bouffants and creep suits. ‘Today’s talk is about dick,’ they should say, and the fat choir in the background wit the orange robes starts swaying and singing, ‘Diiiick, diiiickk, oh lovely beautiful dick dick diiiiiick . . Sean’s voice got high and funny and he thrust one arm up into the night air of Virginia and waved it and back and forth, and I had to laugh.
Just then another toll booth appeared out of nowhere and we zoomed into the thing kinda too fast. We had to back up a speck. We were the only ones there at this hour and the skinny old attendant looked like a chicken with the top button of his khaki uniform shirt buttoned, and his eyes soured when he looked at our Massachusetts license plate. His name tag had Vernon Spivey written on it in swirly letters.
“Howdy, partner,” Sean said.
“Two dollars and forty cents,” the attendant replied. “Want a ’Merican flag?”
His eyebrow arched and he held up a stack of flag decals that he must’ve been giving away. He shuffled them with a brown-stained thumb as he stared at Sean.
“We’re all set, Pops, thanks,” Sean said. All the old-man talk around Southie’s DAVs and VFWs, including Sean’s father (a Vietnam vet), was what an asshole Bush was, cutting Veterans’ benefits and sending troops off to kill and die for oil. Jimmy McAllister’s brother had been sent home for beating up prisoners or something, and it said in the papers that when he questioned his superiors about this he was told These Are Special Times So Don’t Worry About It.
“How’s the stem of your bladder tonight, Vernon?” Sean asked politely as he took his change from the dude, and then we started laughing and took off before if and when there could be retorts.
“How come his name tag was like all calligraphied?” I asked as we roared off again.
“Dunno. Cuz Virginia is for lovers maybe. What a sour bastard! I thought people were supposed to be friendly down South, no?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, he smelled anyways. Did you get a whiff of him? Like a large Italian sub with everything on it. Probably hasn’t had a bath since he was caught in The Flood, the’ old bastard.
After a minute Sean said, “See Richie, those ministers like sex and what it can do and they enjoy it, and they go around and they fuck whenever they want and stuff, they feel the Bible tells ’em it’s okay— go forth and multiply you all—so they say it’s a blessing. And it is. But I guess that ain’t enough for them, cuz they’re always worrying about other people and whether these other people might be enjoying dick too, and if they’re people like them it’s okay but if it’s people that aren’t like them it’s not okay. It’s sin. Big fat sin and your ass’ll go to hell for it. Fuckin’ assholes.”
He took another swig of his beer but this time it didn’t dribble down his chin and shirt.
“So see, in their dirty minds it’s really all about dick, who gets it and who don’t and who deserves it and who don’t and who should use theirs and who shouldn’t. ‘Today’s sermon is about dick,”’ he imitated again in the high funny voice, “‘and God agrees with us. He’s on the holy lookout too for people who might be using it in an unapproved manner.’”
A billboard whizzed by for a furniture outlet coming up that said STEP ON UP INTO OUR BEAUTIFUL SHOWCASE OF ROOMS! It showed in the foreground a blonde lady and a dark-haired man hand-in-hand and one designer little blond boy and one designer little blonde girl, all of them from the back climbing up into a living room in the background that was all lit up with golden light like it was the Promised Land. There were five poles with cups of light flooding down onto the billboard and thousands of white moths fluttered around them hysterically.
“See now that little lady,” Sean said in his fake Southern accent, hiking his thumb back to the billboard which was gone now. “Why, she’s allowed to have dick cuz she’s one of us. And that fine young father is allowed to use his dick whenever he wants cuz he is like us too. Cain’t you see the wedding bands on their fingers and the fine childrens the Lord done blessed them wit?” Then he snickered again but his eyes weren’t laughing. “And not only that, but lookit all the fine thangs that open up to you when you er allowed to have dick. Nice new furniture, big-ass TV, and a minivan to do your shopping in, and neighbors that you know will keep an eye on your fine home when you travel, cuz they shore ’nuff keep an eye on it when you is home, just to make sure dick ain’t being used inappropriately.”
But I was thinking I was like the moths, fluttering uselessly around the light of Sean and it would all be for nothing, nothing again; he’d go back in a day or two or a week or a month.
I’d never heard him talk like this before and I didn’t know what to do, so I put my feet back up on the dashboard. But then I could smell my sneakers again and I was afraid Sean would too so I put them back down on the floor and looked at them and how skinny my legs looked. I wondered if they looked just this skinny from Sean’s angle so I flexed my legs and that made the muscles stand out a little and they didn’t look so bad. I kept them that way even though it was uncomfortable.
About ten miles later it was wicked dark, so I relaxed my legs, but we couldn’t see any stars because the sulfur light poles on each side of I-95 were too glaring, like bright-brown camera flashes going off in sequence every three seconds.
Sean said, “Richie, I betcha a lot of people throw out the baby wit the bathwater and don’t … like or believe in God because these people are such hateful fuckin’ assholes. You got a stick o’ gum on ya, Richie?”
“Ahh, no. I gave you the last piece an hour ago there. At the toll booth?”
“Oh. Huh. Well anyways, it ain’t that fuckin’ complicated, this God stuff. But you got all these people talking and arguing and fightin’ over it, and countries going to war over it cuz they’re right and the other people are wrong. Like God would favor one people over another, or be reduced to being … a godamn dick cop. People do that, but not God. What good’s a God who’s not for everybody? You know what I think?”
Usually when Sean asked that question he didn’t wait for an answer, but this time for once he did. You get on a highway and Drive Drive Drive, and everything changes. Except the scenery.
“You know what I think?” Sean said louder above the rushing air, which smelled like pines and water and truck exhaust now.
“Ahh, no, Seannie. What do you think?”
“I think everybody’s been given a di
fferent piece of the puzzle like, and the only way we get to know God is if we all compare our pieces.”
“We all?” I teased. I didn’t know what else to say.
“We all,” he repeated in his fake Southern accent. “But no, see, God is good. He throws us all the occasional bone.” Then he reached his hand over and put it on my lap and squeezed through my cutoff sweats. My heart started racing and my mouth went dry with heat. Then Sean laughed, and put both hands back on the steering wheel. But later when it was my turn to drive in North Carolina and I was exhausted and my eyes were imploding, I reached over to Sean and did the same thing to him. But he brushed my hand away and mumbled, “Not in the mood right now,” and that made me so crazy with self-doubt and desire that I was coke-awake in a second and drove all the way through North and South Carolina without a yawn while Sean snored lightly away above the rushing wind, all curled up in a ball that faced away from me with his hands tucked between his knees. Little mmmphs out of him once in a while. Right after we crossed the state line into Georgia, we came to a rise in the road and a long orange swipe lay across the sky to the east. I pulled over at a rest stop because there was something calamitous tugging at my insides. The rest stop was empty except for closed-up rest rooms and a big sign welcoming you to the State of Georgia, the Peachtree State and Birthplace of Ty Cobb and also this big double truck pulled over on the side there that had UNCLE CHARLEY written across its cab in big swirly letters. I started crying for Every Reason in the World, which is the opposite of No Particular Reason at All. Maybe not the opposite, now that I think about it.
Sean didn’t open his eyes but he slid his hand over to mine and gripped it tight. I jumped cuz I thought he was sleeping. Then he pulled his hand back, wiped it across his hidden face, and brought it back to mine. It had a tear on it—one of his, I guess.
“How come?” he asked after a while, when I had just about stopped. His voice was syrupy, raw. I felt this closeness fall down onto us from the sodium-sulfur sky above, like an alien spaceship’s tractor beam.
“Everything,” I said. I sniffed my nose empty. “What about you? The cats?” (I’ll explain later about the cats.)
“No,” he said after a minute. He gave a little laugh. “Well, maybe a little.” He paused again. “I guess mostly cuz … I don’t know … this world. It’s … gettin’ mean, Richie.”
I’d never heard his voice come out just like this before. All … tendery.
“Richie,” he went on, and now his voice sounded quavery too, not frequency-quavery like the radio mean-ister, but real quavery which I’d never heard before either, even those times in court when he was in trouble. “Richie, you’re the nicest … you’re nothing but good. If there wasn’t you in the world I don’t know what I’d think. Your … face. I always see your face whenever I get in a jam. Just … smilin’, the way you do.”
I sat up straight, fixed my cap again, and for the first time found my voice with Sean, with anyone. “We can make our own world. That’s … that’s what I’m trying to do here. With … you.” I waited a second for the thudding in my ears to slow down a little. It sounded like the marching of booted soldiers. “And it won’t be mean.”
A loud bird that I’d never heard before started gibbering from nearby woods behind the rest stop where they were about to build a Burger King and Mobil “On the Run” gas station; they already had the signs up. I thought there was something especially frantic in the bird’s every third note.
“We can make our own world,” I said to Sean again when he didn’t say anything.
Sean squeezed my hand.
“Sure,” he said. “Sure we can.”
AFTER ANOTHER MINUTE he said, “I can drive now for a while, Richie, and you can sleep.” There was this mist in the air and it was very warm and things smelled green and yellow, and Possibilities started rising with the day. I could feel them.
“Awright,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt. Sean never wore his, but I pictured us getting into a car some years from now in Florida and telling him to buckle up. The sky in this vision was blue. Biggy blue and endless, with palm trees and Life at the edges. “But I gotta pee first.”
“Okay,” Sean said, closing his eyes and sliding back down in his seat.
While I peed I tried a few scenarios on him: thirtyish, a little paunchy, sales, grimacing on the way to his two o’clock when a little of the egg salad sub he’s eating dribbles onto his tie at a stoplight, and how many times have I told him not to eat in the car before an appointment.
But for now we were in Georgia and Sean said, “But you know it’s really simple, Richie, all o’ this God stuff. Love one another. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked, visit the sick. Or is it visit the prisons? I forget now. ’Member Richie when you bailed me out?”
I nodded and took a deep breath. Sean had been trying to straighten out his act for the umpteenth time two years ago and got a job downtown at Jordan’s. They got bought out by Macy’s but we all still called it Jordan’s. They put him at the parking ticket validating table and he wore tight navy blue polyester pants and a white short-sleeve shirt with a blue tie, and a maroon colored suit jacket that didn’t fit all that nicely and had permanent BO from some person beforehand. You only had to pay three bucks to park in the garage if you bought something at Jordan’s, but Sean had to stamp your ticket; otherwise it was like eighteen bucks or something outrageous like that. Sean said all these rich asshole businessmen and bitchy rich ladies would always sweep in and say they lost their receipt and try to talk their way into Sean stamping their ticket so they could save fifteen bucks, but he never would. He took his job officially. Like I say, he had a uniform and everything. He was trying so hard to straighten out, we met for lunch a few times and all he did was feed the pigeons and consult his watch to make sure he was back on time. I was so proud of him. Anyways, one time this guy came in and told Sean he lost his receipt “but stamp it anyway cuz I’m in a rush.” Sean pointed to the sign and said, “I can’t stamp it unless I see a receipt that you bought something in the store.” The guy was wearing a rich suit and had attitude and said, “Yeah, I can read too, but I told you I lost it and I’m in a rush. So what part of ‘stamp it now’ don’t you understand?” Sean told the guy the part he didn’t understand was how someone could ask him to stamp it when the sign said oddviously that you had to present your receipt to have your ticket stamped. (Sean always said oddviously even though I told him tons of times it was obviously, and now I said it that way too and sometimes forgot which was right.)
“Okay, how much do you want?” the guy snapped, throwing his overcoat down on Sean’s counter and pulling out his wallet. One of the buttons on the guy’s coat hit Sean’s lip on the way down and it hurt.
“What do you want, five dollars? Ten dollars?” the guy said, pulling out two greasy fives.
“I can’t take that,” Sean said, starting to laugh. The guy grabbed his cashmere coat and looked around in rage.
They sold greeting cards right next to the ticket-validating place and the guy said, “If I buy one of those cards can you stamp my ticket?”
“I can,” Sean said.
The guy grabbed any old card from the rack and paid for it. A NIECE IS A SPECIAL PERSON, the card said. Then he came back and threw the receipt at Sean.
“Okay, now you can stamp it,” he said.
As soon as Sean stamped the guy’s ticket, the guy took the card he’d bought and tore it up right in Sean’s face and the pieces fell onto Sean’s counter, some on his lap, like fake snow coming down. The guy snickered and stormed off and just before he went out the door Sean called after him, “You know, you need to get a new attitude.”
The guy froze, then turned around.
“Who the hell are you to talk to me like that!” he snarled. I guess the guy couldn’t get over it. He’d said he was in a rush but I guess he wasn’t in that much of a rush cuz he came back to Sean and said, “Listen, I got an eighty-thousand dollar car out there! I’m thirty-th
ree years old and I’m a millionaire! What are you?” and he kinda snorted as he looked Sean up and down.
“What am I? What am I?” Sean said, and he kinda smirked. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m the guy who wouldn’t stamp your ticket until you followed the rules like everybody else. Isn’t America a great country?”
The guy freaked out then and started sputtering.
“You’re a loser!” he practically screamed. “And you always will be! You’re a seven-dollar-an-hour nothing!”
“Not,” Sean answered. “And you have an asshole haircut.” (Sean told me later the guy had like ugly Hollywood-long hair, which is bad enough on an actor but looks way stupid on a professional. It’s fine I guess if you’re a freak or too smart to be bothered or in a rock band, but otherwise it looks kinda stupid, no?)
The guy could hardly get words out of his mouth then. He was like sputtering and gibbering, and finally he roared, “You want to step outside and say that?”
Sean really didn’t want to. I mean, he was on the clock and everything. But what are you gonna do? You can’t really back down where we’re from, it’s all they’ve left us. So Sean got up from his desk and walked over to the guy.
They stepped out through the revolving doors onto the street and the guy started talking to Sean and saying, “Hey. Wait, man, we can talk this out,” and then all of a sudden he threw a wild, sneaky sucker punch. Sean ducked, then hit the guy once and decked him. Unfortunately a cop was across the street and, to make a long story short, this guy was like a big-shot lawyer and his uncle was a state rep or I forget a judge or something and then of course they found out Sean was on probation (nothing serious) so they brought him to The Place Where They Keep Poor People—jail. And of course he lost his job at Jordan’s, so he just figgered there was no sense in trying to straighten out cuz the world really doesn’t want you to. They say they do but then they put all these roadblocks up to make sure you stay in your seven-dollar-an-hour place.