Love & Darts (9781937316075)

by Jones, Nath

  You see that real unnamed breath, which never has explained itself. As if you care. You violently toss away your Bible school-issue halo but it boomerangs, chokes you, and spins around your neck like a fast, accurate horseshoe on a stake cemented against the force of arthritic clapping and victorious shouts by some great-uncle at a family reunion. And with this kind of physical proximity to the essence of life you know instantly and then know nothing of it, remembering the bank teller, this old enemy from high school, is divorced with two kids.

  You should have just deposited this thing at the ATM but you can’t now. You want a pineapple sucker and need a roll of quarters anyway. You shift your weight to place your body under the air conditioning vent. The man in the suspenders is finished with his business. He pounds a stack of envelopes on the counter and explains himself as he heads for the door, the truck, and the post office, which is under review. “Wouldn’t have even had either overdraft fee if the payroll service didn’t take the day off for the Fourth. Damn thing’s automated. How’s a computer gonna take the day off?” And he’s gone.

  The door is made of glass tinted brown.

  Before you take that last step forward there is another glimmer in your mind but it is nothing fearful, nothing really intimidating, nothing that can hurt you. Not anymore. Those glimmers are good. They breed humility in your worldview, deference in decision-making, caution while driving, and hesitation in what you say. They are visitors that beguile certainty on tired afternoons, trespassers and traitors, like old friends lost, like space invaders.

  But whatever. You don’t have to look over your shoulder anymore. Just put your paycheck between your teeth, pull the boomerang/horseshoe/halo thing away from your throat, and readjust your headband. You don’t have a duty to listen to this girl’s sob story while she cashes your check.

  You don’t have to care. You don’t. But you do need a roll of quarters. So you take that last step forward and smile. Just hand her the stupid paycheck and say it. “Hey. Girl. How’ve you been doing?”

  You pick up the baseball-shaped coffee mug and start rifling through it looking for what you want.

  She takes it as her cue to say she’s recovering slowly from a bout of too much drinking which came out in the custody hearing—it’s not as if she drives into oncoming traffic every day—but luckily they found in her favor. You do not care. But you still smile. So she goes on. She couldn’t believe that the judge let him get out of paying the child support he’d missed: the child will only eat brand-name chicken nuggets, which are not cheap even if you buy in bulk. She moved back in with her mom and dad and they are helping her get back on her feet. She had to sell the house but that was okay because the roof needed to be replaced and the people that bought it knew some great roofers. She couldn’t have afforded to put a roof on that house after all the court costs and divorce and all. But she’s doing really well.

  It’s over. You’ve got the quarters. You’ve listened to whatever she felt the need to share. You’re done. You turn to leave. You take a step away from the counter and have your sunglasses back on before she says, “And what about you? Did you decide to press charges?”

  BLEACH & WHITE TOWELS

  After work—fuck that bullshit job—I get home and give in.

  Sometimes I can’t get back up off the couch all night. It’s not any one thing. I just don’t know what duties matter, what obligations I care about, or how much to let myself be exploited by these assholes who think one person can do six peoples’ jobs. American dream. Are you freaking kidding me? Who the hell makes it happen? I don’t see how it’s possible. A house? Marriage? Kids?

  I’m tapping the base of the entertainment center with my shoe and slouch down. My neck’s bent against the back of the couch and my butt’s hanging off the cushions. I’m glad I don’t have a girlfriend. Dating’s too expensive. One dinner and a movie and I can hardly pay my rent.

  There’s not crap on TV anymore. I throw a frozen French bread pizza in the toaster oven, go back to the couch, grab the remote, flip around for a while, watch some news, maybe a little SportsCenter, but what’s the point?

  The Brewers suck right now. They’ll never amount to anything with Davey Lopes.

  The timer reminds me to get up. By no stretch of the imagination is this pathetic pizza a supreme. There is one shaving of sausage and a layer of cheese I can see through on top of the thin slab of bread. Flakes of red and green pepper placed at statistically optimal distances from one another seem to repel the tiny cubes of pepperoni that dot the top.

  Still. They don’t cut corners on packaging. Some dude stares up at me from the pizza box in the trash. He’s supposed to be a fighter pilot, an ideal. His red scarf is blowing back in the wind. His eyes are cast to the heavens beyond. Dashing. Dude’s got a fucking mustache and a tousled animated haircut. He’s wearing goggles on his head. And his stylized WWII garb would still get more women than I ever could.

  I look at the clock. It’s almost eight. Whether or not I show up, Judson’s always got a shot of Tullamore Dew sitting in a glass on the bar for me at eight o’clock. To have a drink waiting for you at the bar when you get there is a great sign of significance.

  I don’t really care that much.

  But I usually go. Some people put on a new shirt to go out at night. I never do. I’ve never really understood it. I just go in my work clothes. The bar on the corner is brick, has a cracked set of curved cement steps that no one’s ever gonna fix, and has too many neon signs for the size of the windows. There are two small Harleys parked on the sidewalk. Who the hell parks on the sidewalk?

  I open the door and camel bells slap the back side. A few other regular patrons look up from listening to the bartender read out loud. He does that sometimes. Seems to get a kick out of it on slow nights. He holds a book and says, “And I am dirty with its satisfaction.” I rattle the door, like applause maybe, like I’m sort of making fun of him, too. Nothing crazy. Nothing out of control. Just enough to bring him down a peg. The camel bells smack the wall once and Judson shuts the book. He doesn’t look pissed and sure enough, my drink’s waiting in front of my seat at the short end of the bar.

  He looks me in the eye, “‘And I am dirty with its satisfaction.’ Isn’t that great? So much in it. All the guilt. All the pleasure. All the social constructs and guises and norms and repression. I love it.”

  I drink slowly. “I’ll love it when you get off the literary kick.”

  “Just waiting for Monday Night Football so the library card can go back in the closet. I can’t stand baseball. Won’t have it in this bar.”

  The Brewers suck anyway. “You got anything to eat back there?”

  He starts to dig through a little fridge and produces half an egg salad sandwich, three jalapeno-pickled green beans that go in the Bloody Marys, and a fistful of pretzels stale from the humidity. He plops everything onto a paper plate that bends with the weight and shoves it over to me. “A little gold, frankincense, and myrrh for you, right there. How’s that?”

  Better than that crappy pizza. “I’m dirty with its satisfaction.”

  He turns his back, picks up a bucket, and heads for the ice maker. I watch him digging down into the chest of fused ice cubes. What the fuck is he using? Some kind of red plastic thing. “Is that a sand shovel for kids at the beach?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  I don’t want to ask. But. I can’t let it go. “Why the fuck are you using a sand shovel?”

  “I don’t know. I bought it last week. Thought it’d work pretty good. I hate those stainless steel scoops. The handles get too cold. And I don’t like cutting ketchup jugs to make scoops either. Too much trouble. They bend and crack. This is sturdy.”

  “But it’s a kid’s toy.”

  “So.”

  There are two women playing pool. They don’t talk too much but enjoy the game. One wears black leather pants. The other’s in a black leather vest. They must account for the two Harleys outside. Nebraska plates. Nice bi
kes. But I don’t know too much about bikes. I look at the woman in the vest a little too long. She smiles. She cocks her hips. She leans on the pool cue. She opens her mouth and touches her tongue to the tapering length of the wood.

  Jesus. Who wants to deal with all that? I’ve gotta work in the morning. I swivel on my stool, put both elbows on the bar, and watch Judson dump ice over the beers. “Those girls in for Summerfest, you think? I’m not going this year. Too many people. Too much traffic.”

  “It’s Harley’s 100th though too. That could be it. Or just traveling.”

  “The 100th was last year.”

  “Right.” I can’t eat egg salad sandwiches. Shit’s nasty. “How’s their game?”

  “Better than yours. What do you think about my egg salad? Never made it before, but I had a craving.”

  “Not bad. Needs to be on toast though.”

  “Toast? I’ve never had egg salad on toast. I’ll try it.”

  He gets summoned to the other end of the bar. I pick up a paper and suck on a green bean. I flip slowly through the Journal Sentinel. After a while Judson wanders back and starts washing glasses.

  I hold up the paper, turn an article toward him so he can see the headline and photo. “Did you see this about Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker on Saturday? Bizarre.”

  “Yeah, the lineup’s fucked this year. I used to know more of the smaller bands. Now I barely care.”

  We’re silent for a little while. It gets later. More people start coming in. They fill up the bar around me and the bartender gets busy. I read an article about zoning regulations. I read another article about various parking tribulations for Summerfest. I read part two in a three-part series about the zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes and its damaging effects on the ecosystem. I say to Judson, “Have you ever heard of an invasive species?” But he doesn’t answer. I keep reading. The mussels come from the Caspian Sea and other foreign ballast waters of oceangoing ships that come to port in Chicago, Detroit, and Green Bay. They make a hell of a mess of pipes apparently. I drink the High Life. The wet bottle makes rings on the newspaper. The bikers settle up and get on their way to wherever.

  I move a coaster with two fingers like it’s part of an air hockey game. I say to Judson, “Whatever happened with Lacy?”

  He rubs the back of his hand across his nose.

  I’m hitting the coaster against the bottom of my beer bottle wondering if he’s going to respond when he says, “She decided to keep it.”

  I look back at the red sand shovel left in the ice maker. “You gonna marry her?”

  “Who? Lacy? Fuck no. I’m not marrying Lacy. Why would I want to deal with her shit for the rest of my life?”

  “So what’re you gonna do?”

  “Get a fucking lawyer, I guess.”

  An hour goes by. Judson cuts the air conditioning and has me open up the windows since he’s busy mixing mojitos for some out-of-towners who had heard of them on “Sex and the City.” They probably aren’t great mojitos, but the girls seemed content to pretend. “They’re dirty with the satisfaction,” he mouths to me while the girls giggle together.

  I tilt my head back and smile in recognition.

  “When you get a chance, bring me a little more of this High Life, and those green beans. They’re great.”

  He comes back my way, “I know. I grow the beans in an empty lot next to my house then I pickle them here. I use white wine vinegar, onion, garlic, about ten red chilies, some jalapenos, rock salt, and pickling spice. Boil it up. Two weeks in the cellar and they’re ready. My grandma used to make a pickle similar to it with all sorts of vegetables but not quite as hot. But I love these with a vodka or Bloody Mary. Nice offset for the flavors.”

  “You should sell them to all these type of fucks, folks you know. They’d give you a fortune for ‘em.”

  “Not my style. I like the Ball Mason jars. The lids especially. And I like the quiet morning making them couple times a year. I want a tradition, not another job out of it.”

  Someone puts some money in the old juke box. Jimmy Cliff. Outside, a couple of guys tie a German shepherd to the stop sign and come in for a game of darts. I drink two more beers and watch the dog from the window as the evening moves on. The dog turns his head watching people walk by on the sidewalk. Then he settles down and falls asleep.

  Conan has Emilio Estevez on as a guest. The TV’s muted so I have no idea what brought Emilio onto a talk show. But his chat washes by with the rest of it.

  Then it is just me and Judson.

  He says, “You think I’ll be a good dad?”

  “You know you’re gonna be better than mine.”

  He laughs.

  I get off the stool, put the chairs up on the tables, shut the windows, turn off the neon signs, and check the bathrooms for anything vile while Judson cleans up the bar. He lays the stainless steel tools out on a clean towel to dry.

  He sets a shot up on the bar, “For your troubles, man. Thanks.”

  I drink the shot. “No trouble.”

  He wipes the bar down. He wipes the tables down, wipes the metal work down, tosses the old white towels into the little stainless steel bar sink, fills the sink with cold water, and adds a splash of bleach. He swirls the towels and rinses his hands. “They’ll sit over night. You ready?”

  JULY & THE BUFF ORPINGTONS

  Before their necks are broken they are beautiful. These chickens live under a tent for a week in July. The heat wraps up and around the sides of the tent and hangs thick in the middle. The day is hot but it is hotter inside the tent even with its shade. The bird cages are steel mesh wire. Not big, flimsy hexagons but little, tight squares less than half an inch across. At the places where the wires cross over each other the metal is built up. There is a matte coating over it that hides the welds. Slow, scaly feet move easily over the open-work wires but are careful, intentional.

  The fans are humming. They are old and rattling—real metal fans that hang in four corners of the tent. The air is heavy and even these industrial fans are ridiculous against such weight. Smells circulate but air barely moves with the fans’ futility. It is so hot for the birds that someone, some thoughtful caretaker, brought a plastic home-use fan. Everyone has a fan like this. It’s the kind that sits on dingy golden carpet in hallways, by sunken couches in living rooms, on cherry veneer tables beside beds where love gets made, and on top of endlessly-flashing-noon-‘cause-no-one-knows-how-to-reset-the-time microwaves in disinfected kitchens. So, having seen such fans everywhere else, it’s not so strange to see one in the poultry tent. Someone has pushed the darkest brown button and pulled the white peg up so the fan will oscillate on top of the middle row of cages. As the fan directs and redirects its effort, pink, purple, blue, and white ribbons sing out, fluttering enough to draw attention to particular cages. Those wire rooms for the birds are lined up as a single-file perimeter around the sides of the tent and two deep back-to-back down the center. Observers flow as if channeled through thick-walled ventricles of a heart.

  Feathers move slightly as the fans push the air. There are bits of feathers gathered down around the wooden stilt-legs of the cages on the limestone gravel. There are feathers in the fans. And feathers in the cages. And feathers in the taut fraying jute ropes of the tent. Just downy white and gray pieces mostly. The few good, big, pretty, golden feathers are picked up quickly and swept away to shaft-stroking wonderlands with the giggles of little girls.

  The chickens pick up their bony, intentional feet and slow-dance, sometimes even with flapping wings. They turn and their feet seem backwards. Then, not forgotten, the bodies turn. With short jolts, their heads betray nothing held in confidence. The eyes focus and then turn away. Strangers read names of the owners out loud and point, showing each other whatever they see as important. We do it, too. “Come over here and look at this one.”

  For twenty years my mother has taken me and my father to the fair. We go through the sheep barn. We go through the cattle barns, dairy and bee
f. We look up at the names painted on the rafters: names of friends, and brothers of friends, and fathers of friends. Green paint on old white paint. We remember our head, our heart, our hands, and our health. Sandals fill with dust as we walk down the missing-lightbulb midway. We eat something familiar because it’s only once a year. There is no anxiety for goldfish swimming through food-color-dyed waters in dirty bowls and no mortal fear for the cheap stuffed nothings everyone wants to win.

  We wander slowly through it all. It is hot, July. We stop. I want to watch the boys throwing darts at a rainbow wall of slack balloons. Because there is no sense of impending doom for that child who paid for his three chances. He aims while my father crosses his arms over his chest and stares. We feel the imminent impact. We want the child to perform well, to win the biggest, best prize: the huge stuffed tiger. But who can really hope for so much? And what responsibility does this child have to our family? None. So. We don’t really care if the child bursts something nothing-filled. We don’t expect it. The first dart glances off the pulverized wooden board and drops into a metal collecting tray. He refocuses. Aims again. Then one, two steel darts pop big yellow flopping balloons as we cheer, congratulate, and smile. The child turns to us and smiles too. Dad walks on. We follow.

  It cannot be that this will kill him. I look at my father, who stands with us eating a pork burger from the Rotary Club’s tent. He watches the people walk by. He speaks to the ones he knows. They don’t know yet, but we know. And still we smile and say hello. We laugh at the round-bellied kid in the little red t-shirt. And we ask the questions that you ask. But we don’t say, “He’s dying.” We will have to soon enough.