by Barb Johnson
Luis isn’t sure what that last part means, but it all sounds good. He closes his eyes and pictures the bishop slapping him. In his mind he doesn’t hit back. He can do it; he’s sure of it.
Father Ben pulls out a certificate with Luis’s name on it and uncaps the fountain pen that Luis once used to strafe a classmate. Ack-ack-ack-ack! The pen gun left blue blood splatters on the other boy’s shirt. All units in the vicinity, we got a 189 at Prompt Succor.
“Have you decided on a Confirmation name?” Father Ben asks.
Luis forgot about this part, about how you have to pick a saint’s name to be your Confirmation name, and he lost the list that Father Ben gave everyone a long time ago. He wonders if this is a final test. If he guesses wrong, will Father Ben still pass him? The saint is supposed to protect you, and you’re supposed to pick someone you want to be like. “Goliath?” Luis says. Goliath, a name like a pit bull.
“Goliath wasn’t a saint, Luis. He was the mean giant who hurt everyone, remember?”
Of course Luis remembers, and he wonders again why all the saints have to be such sissies, why they can’t be badasses worth looking up to. Although. It was David who kicked Goliath’s ass, even though he was small like Luis, plus he could play one of those old-timey guitars. “Oh, I meant David,” Luis says.
“David? Okay. David it is, then.”
Luis watches DAVID appear on the page, the straight backs of the two d’s like the place you could attach rubber bands and make a slingshot to kill a giant. After the certificate is all filled out, Luis gets in line at the confessional with the other kids. Even though it’s just Father Ben in there, Luis worries about what kind of sins to tell, what kind of sins a man has to confess. Finally, he decides to say a little about some stealing, but he doesn’t mention any names. He wonders if giving Junior a blow job is a sin if he’s doing it to keep Junior off his mama. That’s between him and God, Luis decides, and he confesses losing his temper instead. Father Ben gives him five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys as a penance, which is what he gives everyone no matter what they did.
After he’s through with his penance, Luis kneels in the pew for a while studying the stained glass where the sun has turned into a spotlight over Jesus’ head. It makes Jesus look like he just got a bright idea. That’s what Luis needs, an idea about how to keep Junior away from his Confirmation party. Luis could use smiting, maybe. Everybody in the Bible smites their enemies, but usually God will smite them for you if he’s on your side.
It doesn’t seem right to expect God to do his work for him, but Luis isn’t big enough to smite Junior himself or vex him, either, which is another thing God does if you go against Him. Luis decides to ask God for an idea about what to do. But just an idea because a man handles his business. He’s pretty sure that if he can get a good idea of what to do, then he can do it himself because ideas are like science. You don’t have to be big to use them. And the best kind of idea would be a science idea because science is what makes a song come out of a radio. Or a tuning fork vibrate without touching it. Luis bets it can make a fat cabron miss a party, too.
The night before his Confirmation, Luis is in the backseat of the BMW, waiting for Miss Delia to close up the Bubble across the street. While he waits, he practices his prayers for the ceremony. He’s timed it, and he can say the Act of Contrition in fifteen seconds flat, no peeking at the book. He’s ready.
This afternoon, Abuelita sent Luis home with three huge platters of food that she and her friends cooked after hours, right there in the Hosea House kitchen. When Luis brought the food in, Junior told him that he better not be planning to invite any relatives over after Confirmation, and Luis said no way, which is the truth. It was Abuelita who called everyone.
Luis has to fast now, which means he can’t eat anything until his party tomorrow to show that he’s willing to suffer for God. As of midnight, he’ll be a man, and God will be on his side. He knows his prayers. He’s got a suit, and he’s got a fistful of sleepy-time for Junior. Thirty-six Vicodin he took out of the big bottle by his mama’s bed. The label on the bottle said one every six hours, which is four a day, but Junior’s huge, and it takes a lot to stop him from doing what he wants to do. Luis figures he’s only gonna have one shot at getting Junior out of the way, so he’s gonna give him all thirty-six at once. Enough to make him sleep through the party and maybe a couple of extra days. That way Luis will have time to get the BMW going, and he and his mama can drive off, maybe get to California, but for sure be long gone before Junior wakes up.
Across the street, Luis watches Miss Delia lock the Bubble up. “See you tomorrow!” she says, giving Luis a wave and riding off on her bike. Once she’s out of sight, Luis reaches under the front seat and pulls out a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, borrowed from Abuelita’s. It’s the most important ingredient for the party tomorrow. Pushing open the car door, he drains most of the bottle into the gutter, leaving just enough to fill Junior’s special drink glass.
Luis unties a camouflage bandana with a jawbreaker-sized knot of Vicodin powder in it. Yesterday in science class, while the Giant was getting her nails done, Luis used his compass and a ruler to smash all the pills into tiny bits on the bandana. He twisted that pile of powder into a knot and tied it around his neck. Since then, that knot’s been beating with the pulse in his throat: Joon-yer, Joon-yer, Joon-yer. Luis drops the powder a pinch at a time into the bottle. After each pinch, he heats the liquid with a lighter—an old silver one that Junior stole off one of the Idiots—then shakes the bottle, hard, until all the pills are dissolved in the milky drink. He’s read in his science book that when a solid completely dissolves in a liquid, it becomes a solution.
When Luis walks through the front door just after midnight, Junior is still awake. COPS is on the TV; a guy with a bleeding head, who’s wearing nothing but a pair of ladies’ drawers, is facedown in the street surrounded by the police. It’s over for him.
From the plate on his lap, Junior is tossing flautas into his mouth. Bing, bang, boom, that cabron is wrecking the neat pyramid that Abuelita made with the food. He looks over at Luis, his eyes all googly and red. “Whatchu got there, hijo?” he asks when he catches sight of the bottle Luis is carrying.
“Nothin.”
“Look like some expensive nothin to me. Whatchu doin with that?” Junior digs under the platter of food, pulls his glass from between his legs.
“Abuelita said it’s a Confirmation present for my mama,” Luis answers, already thinking of his party, his new suit, Abuelita grilling the chicken he hid in the vegetable drawer.
“Look like you already had you some.”
“No, sir. She just sent this little bit.”
“Fuckin cholos,” Junior says, his head bobbing like a balloon on his neck. “Better give me that, then, and don’t say nothin to your mama.” Junior motions for Luis to open the bottle, shoves his glass out to be filled.
“No, sir,” Luis says, emptying the bottle into the glass, “I won’t say a thing.” He goes over and stands next to the door and watches Junior kill the drink in a few greedy gulps, then Luis drags the milk crate over to a place where he can see the TV.
“Loser!” Junior yells at the guy on COPS who’s hiding under a plastic swimming pool. The two cops who’ve been chasing him shake their heads at the half-assed job the junkie’s done. His foot is sticking out right where they’re standing.
By the time the credits roll on the second of the back-to-back episodes, Junior’s face has tipped up toward the ceiling, and he’s snorting and snoring. Luis goes over and takes the plate off his lap. He does his best to stack what’s left of the flautas the way Abuelita had them, then takes them back to the refrigerator where they belong. He scrubs Junior’s drink glass, runs hot water into it, then polishes it with a clean dish towel and puts it away in the cupboard.
Back in the living room, Luis grabs the remote off Junior’s stomach. He flips through the channels until he comes to a show about how bridges get built. On the TV
, a smart-looking man in khakis and glasses studies his plans, big blue drawings on a table he set up right at the edge of a cliff.
The water is so far down and so wide, it gives Luis the willies to think about it. Rocks poke out of the ground everywhere, and there must be snakes, too. For sure no place to stand when it comes time to start building. Luis can’t imagine how anyone could make a way to get over all that mess. But sure enough, an hour into the program, the man with the glasses stands pointing across the completed bridge. Luis watches him get into a car, wave to the crowd, then drive to the other side.
Acknowledgments
I could not have written these stories without the support of my teachers at the University of New Orleans—Rick Barton, Amanda Boyden, Joseph Boyden, Randy Bates and Joanna Leake—and I will be forever grateful for the countless ways that each of them has helped me.
I am thankful as well to my fellow UNO writers, to those who went before me and shone a light: Bill Loehfelm, A. C. Lambeth and Trip McCormick. To those who went with me: Rachel Trujillo, Jen Violi, Lish McBride, Jason Buch, Amanda Pederson, Pete Syverson and Matt Peters. And to the Big Table Workshop: Arin Black, Chrystopher Masaki Kamakawahine Darkwater, David Parker Jr., Casey Lefante and Carolyn Mikulencak. All lent a bright critical eye and a whole lot of heart to this manuscript.
I am grateful to Dawn Logsdon and to Kay Sanchez, both of whom provided some essential education and inspiration.
Marcus, Matt, Tom and Kendall Johnson were my road in, my way out. And my Bean family: all roads lead to you. There is nowhere I will ever be that is half as good as any place you are.
I thank the editors at Glimmer Train Stories, Washington Square and Greensboro Review for giving my early writing a place to live. Grants from the Astraea Foundation enabled me to spend more time writing. And the Gift of Freedom award from A Room of Her Own Foundation has supported parts of this book and will make it possible to write the next one. I am grateful beyond measure.
The fact of this book belongs to my agent, the dynamic Michael Murphy, and to the genius of my editor, Michael Signorelli, and the vision of my publisher, Carrie Kania.
About the Author
Barb Johnson has been a carpenter in New Orleans for more than twenty years. In 2008 she received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. While there, she won a grant from the Astraea Foundation, Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, and Washington Square’s short story competition. She is the fifth recipient of AROHO’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom. This is her first collection.
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
More of This World or Maybe Another
by Barb Johnson
“These are stunning stories. Barb Johnson is the kind of writer whose work I dream of finding and rarely do. Yes, precise and gorgeous language. Yes, a wonderful sense of humor, and another of pathos made over into something much more effective—a vision of all these people just doing the best they can and along the way becoming the best kind of stories—the kind that reveal, enlarge, and make living seem worth the trouble.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“Barb Johnson’s beautiful and touching stories stirred up emotions in me that few books ever have…. I hate to admit it, [but] I actually cried over a pig in one of the stories, and I used to work in a meatpacking plant!”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff
“What a wickedly fine debut More of This World or Maybe Another is. Barb Johnson, a great new talent, brings both the familiar and the extraordinary to life on every page. Once you’re introduced to characters like Delia or Luis, they will haunt you for a very long time. With her first collection, Johnson proves herself a master of the short story.”
—Joseph Boyden, author of Three Day Road
and Through Black Spruce
“Barb Johnson’s stories are stark yet lit with an imaginative power that will not allow us to look away from the truths she depicts. Many of the titles are savagely ironic: “More of This World or Maybe Another,” “Killer Heart,” and “St. Luis of Palmyra.” Johnson’s achievement in this collection is richly compelling.”
—Gerald Duff, author of Coasters and Fire Ants
Copyright
MORE OF THIS WORLD OR MAYBE ANOTHER. Copyright © 2009 by Barb Johnson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194404-8
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