The Early Crap: Selected Short Stories, 1997-2005

by Anthony Neil Smith

  THE EARLY CRAP

  Short Fiction by

  Anthony Neil Smith

  Copyright 2011 by Anthony Neil Smith

  E-reader Version

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  THE EARLY CRAP

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  JAVAPHOBIA

  BITTER SOUL

  EVERYONE GRIEVES IN A UNIQUE WAY

  NOBODY’S KILLING ANYBODY HERE

  AHEAD OF THE GAME

  BAD FOR BUSINESS

  MY WORST DAYS

  A GOOD SUMMER JOB

  CHILE

  JANUARY SECOND

  MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL

  TO HEAR JESUS

  BACKSLIDE

  CROTCH-ROCKETS

  CRAMP

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  INTRODUCTION

  What I have for you here is a collection of some of my earliest published short stories, back when I was a grad student at the University of Southern Mississippi from 1997 until 2002, studying under Frederick Barthelme, Steve Barthelme, and Mary Robison.

  Some of these are crime stories. Some are literary, including my “Pentecostal” stories. All of them show a writer in training. Well, actually, I’m always in training, learning every day, but these are my first sprints. Lots of trips and stumbles, but I still managed to whip them into shape enough to find enthusiastic editors.

  Alas, I’ve lost a few of the files, so those aren’t here. And a few ended up becoming part of my first novel, Psychosomatic, so if you want those, go buy the book.

  Otherwise, these were published as so:

  “Javaphobia” Absinthe Literary Review, Fall 1999

  “Nobody’s Killing Anybody Here” Blue Murder Magazine, Feb 2000 (Cited for honorable mention in Best American Mystery Stories 2001)

  “January Second” Raleigh News & Observer: Sunday Reader Series, July 9, 2000

  “Everyone Grieves in a Unique Way” Barcelona Review, Nov/Dec 2000

  “Bad for Business” Handheld Crime, Issue 27, Mar 2002

  “My Worst Days” StorySouth, Apr 2002

  “Bitter Soul” Cooweescoowee, Fall 2002

  “To Hear Jesus” Connecticut Review, Spring 2003

  “Ahead of the Game” Natural Bridge, Issue 10, Nov 2003

  “Chile” Cardinalis: A Journal of Ideas, Spring 2004

  “My Best Friend’s Girl” Bullet Magazine (UK), Mar 2005

  “Backslide” Juked.com, Apr 2006 (Reprinted in Laugh It Off #4 anthology, South Africa, and in SMSU anthology, Farming Words, 2007)

  There are holes here, of course. Some of these were written early but published later. And there are others I hope to bring you in another collection soon. But for now, feast on my early crap, from a time when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing (as opposed to now, when I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I’m better at doing it for longer and faking it).

  Enjoy (if you can),

  Anthony Neil Smith

  JAVAPHOBIA

  I can’t walk with my coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Actually, not with a mug either. I have to sit down and drink, and I’m careful even then. It’s this fear I can’t shake, picturing myself walking down the hallway at the office, past other professors and students, carrying a big Styrofoam cup full of coffee—two sugars, a splash of skim milk. I’m taking confident steps, the coffee is warbling and trembling the whole time. The outside of the cup is hot to the touch, and then I take a wrong step, just a tad off balance, a little short, and the steaming coffee flits over the side and runs down. Just a trickle, but it scalds my fingertips and I imagine how bad that has to feel. The thought makes me shiver and flex my fingers.

  There’s only one way to stop the pain then, and that’s to get rid of the coffee. But what do most people do when it happens? They hold the cup away from them, afraid to splash their shirts and ties and dresses and jeans. Like they’re thinking, Fingertips be damned. Must save the coffee! For me, the impulse would be to toss the cup, the whole thing, right then and there, no waiting. So it’s a mess. Who cares? That can be cleaned up. I could still type or hold a pen the rest of the day then.

  There are other things about coffee, too. First, I won’t drink the office brew anyway. Aside from the walk back to the office from the lounge, there must be a hundred people a day touching the handle, the spoons, sugar container. With the germs there, it’s an epidemic waiting to happen. Also, every time somebody makes a new pot at the office, it’s a different flavor, one of those weird Hazelnut Vanilla Cream Chicory jobs. And without washing out the pot, we get this blend of those different flavors until the whole mixture’s like sewage.

  I have to make my own at home before I come in. I measure it just right, put in the exact amount of water, get my sugar and creamer and milk meted out. I drink it along with four chocolate chip cookies every morning. And never more than two cups all day. I’m afraid to drink any more after hearing how bad it is on the heart to take four or more cups a day like some people do.

  Take James, one of the other professors in the department, an expert in Medieval Poetry whom I’ve been talking to some. We both love jazz, and sometimes swap albums and tapes, comparing collections. He bugs me, though. He’s always got a mug of coffee in his hand, a strange looking thing with a fat base that narrows towards the lip. He’s never without it, and I suspect that James must be draining two pots a day. What’s worse is how he uses the mug like he would a free hand, moving it for emphasis. He’ll be discussing anything—poetry, basketball scores, Gene Krupa—and be swirling the mug the whole discussion, extending it forwards, up, to the side.

  James can also walk and sip. Now that’s scary. It’s hard enough to imagine the walking without spilling a drop, but coordinating hands, eyes, feet, and mouth at once to bring the lip of the mug up in mid-stride, tilting the mug, wrist and head back together to drink, losing eye contact with the floor and the space directly in front of him for a short moment, then returning to normal without any injury or stain at all is incredible.

  I’m envious. Annoyed by the pompous silky-smoothness of the execution of that move, sure, but I’m secretly envious of anyone who can do it. I imagine that the fearlessness of the Walk & Sip carries over into other areas of James’ life. In his teaching, his hobbies, his academic writings, his relationships with women. He could be one of those types who nonchalantly has affairs with his students, or who lets everyone slide with inflated grades. He could be a bungee jumper, or a heroin addict.

  Whatever the case, this much is certain: Fearlessness is good for one’s career. I’m sure that’s why James was given tenure over me. I was a great teacher, popular with students. I had been published widely in scholarly journals concerning Early American Puritan Literature. I had been loyal to the University for five years, waiting patiently for tenure the whole time, but James got it before me. All because he can walk and sip coffee and wave his mug around calmly in the face of danger and I can’t.

  So, I had to break away. I forced myself to pour a third cup when I got to work that day, and from the office pot, too. I was scared to death on the walk back and went too slowly. Everyone was staring, thinking maybe I had back trouble. But I made it to the desk without a spill. I kept wiping my hands on my pants, wishing I had time to wash them, and was just rising to go do so when Jam
es popped into my office, mug in hand, smile on his face. He said he liked the Scofield tape I had let him borrow, even though it wasn’t quite his taste.

  We talked about Mingus, about Monk, somehow drifted into Pharaoh Sanders, and I held tightly to my Styrofoam cup the whole time, my fingers tingling from the radiating heat. I had no choice but to act casual, look relaxed, try waving the cup around a little as I talked. Little swoop here, lazy jab there. I was doing fine, acting like a fearless human being for once in my life.

  And then the coffee sloshed over. It ran down and touched my index finger before pooling in the web by my thumb. I panicked. The sting was immediate, and I stopped dead in the middle of a sentence with only one blind thought in my head: Lose the coffee. I tossed it right out in front of me, onto James’ face and neck. The cup bounced off him and he screamed, steaming as he did so. I looked at him, then at my wet hand. James dropped to his knees and slapped wildly at his face as all the other professors came running into my office. I examined my white shirt where the splash had hit me and wiped the brown dots into long smears. They were cold by then, and I wondered about that, how something that could scald so thoroughly could cool so quickly.

  BITTER SOUL

  The ghost in my home was supposedly Major Jeremiah Hammeridge, a Confederate surgeon who sawed the limbs off Yankee prisoners of war when they didn’t need it—just for fun, no booze for anesthetic. He figured the soldiers would have lost a limb or two in battle anyway.

  I had lived in this house on the Mississippi Gulf Coast three years with my wife Joanna and son Alan before someone told us about the ghost. After that, we thought we heard noises late at night: loud belching, fits of sneezing, mumbled curses about “Damn Yankees.”

  One night I was in the den, sitting on the floor with my back slumped against the couch while reading the Bible. When I was on call for the funeral home, it felt better to stay up than have the phone wake me at three in the morning to go pick up dead folks at their homes or at car crashes or hospitals, drag them into the empty prep room, drain and aspirate them. I would clean up the wounds, fill in the holes with cotton or wax, pump in the fake coloring, Permaglow. Then, dress them up, go home, and try to sleep without dreaming.

  But I drifted off and dreamed after all. The ghost came through the wall where the TV had been before Jo made me throw it out. He eased into the recliner, arms stretched, palms on his knees. He was purplish and solid, out of focus. Brutal looking with bloodless wounds on his arms and legs. Dark stained uniform, dusty boots. He had a long thick mustache and pointy beard. No eyes.

  “Why’d you get rid of the TV?” he said.

  I shrugged. “I’m not supposed to believe in it. I’m trying to be a Christian.”

  “Trying to be? There’s is or there’s ain’t.” The Major’s voice was high pitched and strained. “There’s been a TV in here since nineteen sixty-three. Every family that moved in here after then had one. It’s too much—no TV and your wife praying so loud all the time.”

  “It’s the way we are.”

  “The way she is. You pray like you’re scared someone will hear. Well I hear, sir, and I am not impressed.”

  “How can you see the TV without any eyes?” I said.

  “Don’t need them anymore. See things differently now.” The Major sighed, and dust spewed from his nostrils. The uniform over his chest, stiff and full when he was upright, sank into a concave hole. He disappeared into a dusty outline.

  I woke up and needed to use the bathroom. My Bible was open to Ezekiel, chapter eleven, verse five:

  And the Spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and said

  unto me, Speak; Thus saith the LORD; Thus have

  ye said, O house of Israel; for I know the things

  that come into your mind, every one of them.

  *

  I told my pastor about my dream an hour before service on Wednesday night. Reverend Burtleson leaned his tall-backed chair away from his desk. He crossed his hands together over his bulging stomach. He had a full head of gray-brown hair.

  “We know spirits work through dreams,” he said, deep voiced and deliberate. “If it’s a spirit, I guess we’ll rebuke it and cast it out.”

  “But it’s a ghost. And I was just dreaming.”

  “Don’t trust evil, Brother Daryl. Evil lies. What does the Bible say about spirits?”

  I didn’t know, so he told me, and I didn’t get it. I had only been in his church seven months, most of those as a back-row skeptic.

  After his explanation, I said, “Then what? Do we go in with Holy Water and splash the place?”

  “No, no. That’s what Catholics would do, not us. We’ll rebuke the spirit in Jesus’ name and anoint all the doors and furniture with oil.”

  “Oil?”

  “Olive oil, anointing oil. Same thing we pray for the sick with.”

  I’d seen that, laying hands on the sick with a dab from a little bottle of yellow stuff. Then the person being prayed for would shake and dance or fall flat on the ground. I had seen it work, too. Saw a flu cleared right up. Sister Margaret had a tumor go into remission after they prayed with her. And he wanted to smear this oil all over my house?

  “What’s the difference between water and oil? Why not water?” I asked.

  “Because the Bible says...” he started, and I tried to keep up but he was a mile past me: Anoint with oil for the sick, for anything you want blessed. (He had a really nice office, lots of space, private bathroom.) And it’s not the oil, but the faith we have in the Lord through anointing that answers the prayer. (A nice couch, nice chairs like the one I was in, soft, deep, swirling greens and burgundy. Dark wood desk covered by thick clear coat, slick and reflecting the lamp light.) As it says in Ephesians, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against demons and powers and spirits, so dress in the whole armor of God. (Wood paneling, shelves and walls covered with artwork, masks, instruments and trinkets gathered while he was a missionary in West Africa for ten years. I was pretty sure he liked Africa better than he did Mississippi.)

  He told me we’d “pray out the spirit” on Thursday night, and he would bring the oil, his wife, and a couple of Prayer Warriors. He said we’d go out to eat afterwards at his favorite Chinese place.

  “I could grill us all steaks instead, if you’d like,” I said.

  His eyebrows flinched up as he said, “That would be just fine.”

  I should have told him not to mention the ghost to anyone, because he did exactly that from the pulpit, after nearly an hour of jazzy gospel from a band with Hammond B-3, keyboards, bass, and drums. That was followed by a few minutes of screaming from Brother Porter, the assistant pastor. He said the same thing every service, that we didn’t worship enough or get into the Spirit, and, “How do you expect God to bless you if you can’t get excited about being in His House? You’d yell at a football game, wouldn’t you? Well, my friends, this is more important than that.”

  I aimed my sitting-there-quietly stare at Porter, and he was dying to come out and say, “Brother Daryl, this means you,” but Rev. Burtleson wouldn’t let him.

  The sanctuary had a high arched ceiling. Everything was freezing and echoing and bright. The pastor took his place at the pulpit and dropped one of his favorite lines since I’d been attending: “I’d rather be here in church tonight than in the best funeral home in town.” I didn’t think it was in good taste.

  He spoke of “increased demon activity” in the city fighting against the work of the church. “Why, just before service, a member of this congregation told me about being visited by an evil spirit in his home. Satan’s at work, people. Be in prayer tomorrow as we go to cast the demon out of that house.”

  Heads turned, folks looking for the most embarrassed or distraught face in the building so the gossip circles could get on the phone and dish on the person consorting with devils. I held my lips tight. Jo twisted in her seat to glare at me. She was sitti
ng a few rows up with a friend, and her eyes were tired behind her glasses. She shook her head, and I waved. Alan was sitting across the aisle with the organist’s kids, flipping through coloring books. I had forgotten to bring something to distract me and had to work hard to tune out the Bible study, third in the series on “Being A Soulwinning Church In The End-Time Revival.”

  After the study, Rev. Burtleson invited the church to come pray at the two long padded altars. Most of the congregation went immediately and knelt or stood with their hands raised. Jo stood behind the first pew, reserved as she held hand out in front of her to keep her friend from falling backwards. The friend was dancing, whipping her hair, speaking in tongues. My wife rarely did things like that, but I liked when she did. It surprised me.

  Alan came over with his plastic box of Crayons and an activity book, crawled into the pew and handed me a yellow. Brother Porter walked up to us. I stood and shook his hand, but he kept his grip on, leaned over to my ear and said, “Don’t you think you should come up front and pray?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “This might be the last night you’ve got, man. Come up and seek the Holy Ghost. You know you need it.” He was sweating through his gray suit. I released his hand, but he grabbed my arm above the elbow.

  “I think you need to let go,” I said.

  “This rebellion isn’t going to get you to Heaven,” Porter said.

  “No, but it will get you punched in the face if you don’t let go.”

  He let go, flashed big teeth and thick gums. “I could take you. Yeah, I could.” He walked back to the front of the church, where people were drifting apart. I sat beside my son and kept my head down, silently praying that Jo would hurry up so we could go home.