Further Joy

by John Brandon

  As evening fell, Marky grew antsy. He filled a thermos with apple juice and carried it around as he straightened his room. He watched a political debate while solving his Rubik’s cube. He was sick of giving away his ingenuity. Just last month he’d consulted with the new owner of the Big Spring Jungle Park, who was his baseball coach’s brother. He had advised him to produce laminated bird-watching pamphlets, and to solicit field trips. He advised a dual ticket with the drag racing museum. Koi in the gift shop fountain. An old man who played the banjo. Already the Jungle Park had taken on new employees. It was the talk of the district. Marky knew that guys in big cities got paid obscenely for that sort of consulting, and Marky didn’t have more than a few hundred bucks to his name. He knew it was a matter of time, and maybe not a long time, before he’d have to support his uncle and cousin. What Marky wanted was to start a business he could bring the two of them into, something where they could contribute however they felt like contributing, where they could find a way to utilize their talents.

  He had been building up his courage to go speak to Nelson Greer, getting his ducks in a row as to what he would say, and now was the time. The ducks would never be in one tight row and there would always be more courage to build, but it was time to see Nelson. He had the address. He had a gift. He checked himself in the mirror, not sure what he was checking for. He put on a belt. Scarfed a granola bar. He went to the garage and gassed up his scooter, fetched the bottle of liquor his cousin had left for him and secured it under his shirtfront.

  Marky puttered down to the Hart Road stop sign and made a left, then steered himself onto thinner and thinner lanes, his headlight flashing over stoic possums. There was a paring of moon way off at the edge of the sky, pale and shy, like the night’s first little thought. Whenever he heard a car approaching he would downshift and veer off into the high weeds. Soon the air smelled different, foreign, like wet clay. Marky was heading generally inland. At one point he was chased halfheartedly by a light-colored dog. He saw a man repairing a hammock by lamplight, an old woman under a carport painting something on sawhorses.

  Finally he steered between a pair of gateposts with no gate. This was the place. Nelson’s villa was in a row of about a dozen, all the same. There was nobody in the courtyard. There were no pets about, no life to be seen or heard. Marky found the correct door and knocked.

  After a moment Nelson peered out a window with clumps of dirt stuck to it. He came outside, checking something in the treetops before regarding Marky. If he was puzzled about his late visitor, he didn’t care to express it. His jeans were unbuttoned, and he seemed to have a cold.

  “You’re on my tree,” he said.

  Marky tipped his head, not understanding.

  “An avocado tree’s trying to grow right there. I buried a pit. Wasn’t that optimistic of me?”

  Marky backed his scooter off the patch of weeds in question and eased it onto its side. He untucked his shirt and held out the rectangular bottle of George Dickel. Nelson took the bottle and held it like a remote control, reading each word on the label. When he turned to go inside Marky followed him in, uninvited, and sat on a loveseat. Nelson went to the kitchen and came back with two cups of whiskey on ice. Marky said, “God, no,” so Nelson poured one cup in the other. The coffee table was laden with dumbbells, sharply folded T-shirts, a tray of dusty silverware, and a newspaper from Connecticut.

  “They must charge a ton to deliver that paper, huh?”

  “Comrade, there are measures I must take to keep sane on this tundra.”

  The line sounded rehearsed. It made Marky think of the Jack London he’d been given in school. He removed his hat and rested it on the Arts & Leisure section.

  “You play second for the yellow team,” Nelson said.

  “That’s right,” said Marky. “That’s me.”

  “Don’t get flattered. I know where everybody on every team plays.”

  “What position did you used to play?”

  “I pitched.” Nelson chuckled hollowly then, apparently accessing some amusing memory.

  “What did you throw?” Marky asked him.

  “I threw a spitter, a Vaseline ball, and a scuff ball.” Nelson paused to drink some of his whiskey, enduring the taste with a stiff, distressed expression. “You can tell a lot about a person by how they play baseball.”

  “Is that right?” Marky said. He was happy Nelson didn’t seem crazy. He seemed out of sorts, but not crazy.

  “That little trick you pulled against Farmer, that wasn’t half bad. You used his skill against him. You gave him a target, and he couldn’t help but hit it.”

  “I had to improvise. The kid weighs 230 pounds.”

  “You had nothing to lose,” Nelson said. “It’s easy to pull shit like that when you have nothing to lose.”

  “I would’ve done it in the first inning if I’d thought of it.”

  Nelson saluted Marky with his glass. “The best kind of loneliness,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Pitching. It’s the best kind of loneliness. It feels lonely but in a good way, out there on the mound.”

  Marky didn’t want to let this meeting get away from him. He straightened his back and leaned toward Nelson. “I’m here because I need you,” he said. “I’m a businessman and I need a partner. I know that sounds strange coming from a guy my age, but I think you and I could make a heck of a team.” Marky was stuck a moment. Then he said, “I’ve paid my dues in the minors and now I’m ready for the big leagues. And for you, it’s time for a comeback.”

  “I know who you are,” Nelson said. “You’re the little entrepreneur. Everybody knows who you are.”

  “I’m committed,” Marky said. “I’m ready to put everything into turning some profits. I’m ready to focus.”

  “You don’t have to sell yourself to me,” Nelson said. He set his whiskey down, one big swallow left in the bottom of the glass. “I’ll save you some time here, because I’m guessing you have the wrong idea about what I’m planning to do with the remainder of my life.” Nelson’s boxy old television, though it wasn’t on, started making a buzzing sound. He leaned unhurriedly and slapped the thing hard on its side, then rested his eyes back on Marky. “I have a very average car with a very, very expensive stereo system in it, and I drive that car to baseball games. That’s what I do. It’s working for me.”

  Marky refused to give Nelson the smile he thought he was earning. He knew Nelson wanted back in the action. People always did. It was just a matter of who would pull him out of his funk. If not Marky, someone else would come along and court him and win him. Nelson’s skill set complemented Marky’s. Marky would generate ideas and Nelson would know what to do with them. Nelson could never turn that part of himself off completely. And he would need to make money eventually. Liquor wasn’t free. Neither was gas.

  “I’m going to help you get revenge,” Marky told him. “On those people who sold you out. And we’re going to have fun doing it.”

  “I don’t need to get revenge on anyone. Nothing happened to me that I shouldn’t have seen coming. Nobody forced me to do a thing.”

  “Maybe you need to get revenge on this person you’ve become. This person who’s been wasting your time, not to mention your abilities.”

  Nelson raised an eyebrow. “You’d hate me after a month. Maybe quicker. We’re not going to find out, but that’s what would happen. I’m not easy to work with.”

  “You’re not lazy. This recluse thing is…”

  “Is what?”

  “Lame. It’s beneath you.”

  Nelson wiped his hand on his jeans like he’d picked up something sticky. “That’s enough of the tough-love bit, kid.” He sniffed sharply. “Look, I never appreciated when people wasted my time by letting me go on and on, so let me be clear. The answer is leave me alone. I want everyone to leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Okay, fine,” Marky said. “I’ll respect your wishes, but I’ll just ask you to listen a minute first.
Hear me out and then I’ll leave.”

  As Nelson methodically crunched ice and massaged his elbow, Marky told him he had a dozen ideas for businesses drawn up in detail, each in a clasped brown folder, and he offered Nelson executive command of any of them he wanted to partner in. The startup for most of them was under twenty thousand dollars. Thirty for sure. A chain of shops where parents and their children made homemade ice cream with exotic ingredients—a snack and a learning experience for the kids, and mom takes home a tub of fig with black sesame to serve at the dinner party. Start in South Tampa. The places would be booked a year in advance for rich-kid birthday parties. A website where people punch a bunch of info in and then receive a list of unique gifts they could give someone. They put in the location where they live, and what they are to the person they’re buying for—boyfriend or former karate student or whatever—and what they got the person last year and all, then out comes a menu of thoughtful presents. A service that pairs someone with money up with a poor kid who wants to be a musician. The patron furnishes instruments and lessons, on the condition the poor kid does well in school. It would be an investment for the patron. If the kid hit it big on the charts one day, the patron’s family would get a piece.

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” said Marky. “Maybe it would work best as a nonprofit. The way I figure it, nonprofit can lead to profit. A dating club that—”

  Nelson had held up his hand.

  “Here’s my advice,” he said. “Switch to right field and do all the daydreaming you can.”

  Marky almost went on with more business ideas, but stopped himself. The particular plans weren’t important, and Marky knew Nelson realized that. Marky could think of a hundred more plans.

  “I’m not going to give up, you know. I said I’d leave and I will, but I’ll just come back. I’ll come back again and again and again.”

  “I sure wish you wouldn’t.”

  “The only way to stop me is by accepting the offer,” Marky said. “Look, don’t you want to be in business with somebody who needs you? Don’t you want to start from the ground up? I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life. Some random guys in an office building could never say that. You’ll have an ally forever with me. We’ll be something.”

  Nelson nodded at Marky, letting out a weak little whistle. He got his feet under him and stood laboriously. He picked up Marky’s hat from the table and squeezed it onto his own head.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You can come back over here, but when you do, bring a couple of mitts and a ball. I’m going to put you through the hard-to-get dance, and it’s going to include playing catch. That’s going to be the main element of it, in fact. No promises about anything else, but I’ll play catch with you.” Nelson had that same deadwood expression on his face. “And now, it’s my dinnertime.”

  Marky stood up, feeling for some reason that it would be unseemly for him to smile, that it would be presumptuous or something, and Nelson handed him his hat. Then the man opened the front door and ushered Marky out into the yard. It was hot and humid out but Nelson shuddered. Marky wanted to shake his hand, but Nelson was already drifting off underneath a live oak tree. The meeting was over. Nelson had already given plenty and he wasn’t going to give more. “Later,” he called, his voice issuing thinly in the dark.

  Marky went to his scooter, making a show of sidestepping the area where Nelson had buried the avocado pit. He fired up his little chopper and hopped on and rolled over the weeds and onto the road. He got up to speed, motoring around a gradual curve through a cloud of pollen. Marky was advancing with reserved dignity through this little moment, but he saw the big picture. He knew that the hurdles before him were petty, that the troubles behind him held no sway.

  *First LP or EP in which instrument appears will feature photography by Hurley Simms in cover art.

  FURTHER JOY

  One girl locked her bedroom door after soccer games—the lost breath and slick tanned limbs, the push of opposition, the spiked shoes. One girl came within a week of perfect attendance and then to avoid recognition for the feat stayed home from school doing nothing, a bit lonesome, nibbling pastries and watching old high school movies full of outdated, luxurious clichés. One of the girls’ fathers owned a fast food joint that did wine pairings. One of the girls’ fathers did not trust his documents in the trash, even if shredded, and he saved them all up and conducted a backyard fire every few months, no matter how torrid the weather. The neighbors would complain but by the time someone from the county appeared the fire would be all but over, the sky hazed with secret finances. A few of the girls enjoyed the zoo, but they didn’t go there together. The zoo required a bus ride. The zoo was a place to be alone and not feel lonely. The girls did not imagine themselves old like their fathers; they imagined themselves as young adults in unknown gray cities, wearing coats that swallowed them up and coats snug to their figures, living in spare apartments nestled unknown distances above unknown streets. They imagined young men in loosened ties, with shy smiles and excellent manners. One of the girls locked her bedroom door after long days at the beach—the smell of the oil, the baking limbs, the bare feet. The girls had what they considered a common-sense policy regarding marijuana: they would not purchase it, but would accept it for free from people they knew, and only if another of the girls was present. The girls were fifteen. They lived in the middle-class section of a town known for wealth, and went to a brand-new high school where nothing was decided. The girls knew that their soccer coach was gay and resolved to keep his secret. He wore sunglasses and polo shirts like every other guy and spoke slowly and without accent like every other guy, but the girls knew. There was no charge when he touched their shoulders, no slight tension. At the end of practice when they got down to sports bras and chugged near the water cooler, spilling down their fronts, he could look at them with casual eyes and they felt no need to pose. One of the girls’ fathers worked at a nuclear power plant in the next county, and every morning he was out of the house before the girl awoke. The girls had little preference where they went to college. They would move away from home, but were not in a big rush about it. The girls hated to be asked what their talents were, their interests and strong points. The girls had at one time or another boycotted espresso, celebrity perfumes, movies that involved outer space, the Internet, the classics of literature, bikinis, appetizers, music featuring electric guitars. One of the girls’ fathers owned a restaurant named 6TABLE that served six parties per night, Thursday through Sunday. For a time, this girl had waited tables. One evening a lady had raised her voice at the girl and the girl’s father had thrown the lady out. Like most of the customers, the lady was rich and bored and so after being thrown out she had dedicated herself to making trouble for the restaurant. Reviews soured, the health inspector appeared repeatedly, an annual gala turned elsewhere for its catering needs. Eventually, and not because her father asked her to, the girl wrote a letter apologizing to the lady, and then showed up at her home and apologized in person. It was hard to know what to apologize for, but the girl managed, leaning on the dictum that the customer was always right. Boredom was the woman’s problem, the girl knew, not wealth. The poor grew bored too and labored at evil. None of the girls would ever run for a student government office. They didn’t despise student government as some did, but the idea of losing an election was sobering. They were thought of as free spirits and could do most anything, most anything—they couldn’t run for treasurer and lose. They couldn’t run for vice president of the student council and draw posters and distribute lollipops and give speeches and then fail to win the election without also somehow losing prestige in the eyes of the rest of the school. One of the girls, cold turkey, stopped locking her bedroom door. She wanted to save up the thrill, bottle it. She didn’t know if it worked this way, but maybe it did. One of the girls had once hated her freckles, and now was proud of them. She relished sitting under her parasol at the beach. It was glamorous, not being tan. It was ori
ginal. She wore black; she blushed and bruised. The girls’ fathers had stopped giving them actual gifts on their birthdays. Instead, each father would take his daughter and all the other girls to dinner. The girls missed the wrapped physical objects. They missed imagining their fathers wracking their brains, bumbling from store to store asking advice. The girls sometimes stayed up all Friday night making bracelets and then sold the bracelets the next day at the Saturday market. They were often given a stand next to a bunch of country boys who sold jerky. The boys were from out in the swamps but were not poor or stupid. They were cocky in a way that was fun rather than despicable. The girls could hardly understand their accents but they could talk about anything—hot rod engines, the local tax system, cities in Australia. If these boys pressed hard enough they could get somewhere with the girls, but they didn’t press. These boys took it as it came. Returning home from the market, the girls would find themselves full of a diffuse yet pulsing frustration. Their fathers, the girls noticed, never entered the girls’ bedrooms. The girls would come up the hallway and catch their fathers peering in, looking skeptical yet fascinated, like nonbelievers peeking into a dim cathedral. One of the girls had been marginally fondled by a shoe salesman. No more than three or four years separated the girl and the shoe salesman, yet he’d been a different element. He had veined forearms and jaw muscles and an accent that didn’t come from the swamps but from some other lesser place. He’d been talking to her but then he stopped. Something lifeless and determined came into his eyes. The girl was the only customer in the store; she had gotten her hair done that day, and had gotten a pedicure. The shoe salesman had taken her bare feet in his hands in a way that was gentle but certain. The shoes sat in their box, impartial. He touched only her ankles and toes, at first, looking into her eyes, knowing all he needed back from her was nothing. And she gave it—a flat look, a look not only empty of protest but as determined as his. They felt like someone else’s feet, to her; they felt like part of a beautiful woman who would never run out of stunts to pull. He let one of his hands wander quick to her hip and then the other hand caught up slowly, tracing its way up the skin of her other leg. When he had an equal grip, dug in close to the bone, the girl could feel very definitely that she was being possessed. When his fingertips ventured under the elastic of her underwear, she heard herself gasp. A bony, pinch-faced old lady came in then, toting a pert baggie that probably contained new sunglasses. The girl knew that if her father ever found out, he would hurt the shoe salesman. The shoe salesman was basically a man, but not like her father was a man. The girl would never have been able to explain to her father that nothing had really happened, and that if anything had it was only because she’d wanted it to. That wouldn’t have been important. Each girl already appreciated her father. Each girl appreciated that her father was soft-spoken on the sidelines of soccer fields, that her father allowed her to try anything she wanted and allowed her to quit those things if she wanted to try something else. The very land, the streets of the neighborhood the girls lived in, possessed a flatness that often felt more than merely topographical. The girls recognized their home terrain instantly in photographs and movies. This literal lack of relief added an air of invincibility to the diffuse and pulsing frustration the girls often fell prey to.