Opioid, Indiana

by Brian Allen Carr

  But of course there was no one home. In the yard, there was a for sale by owner sign that looked pretty new. There was also a sign closer to the house that said trespassers will be shot. That sign looked old as hell. Weather broken. Like it had seen a couple dozen winters and summers, and the letters seemed to bleed out at the edges, lose definition and fade off.

  I went to the door. I knocked. My knocking seemed to sink away into a vacuum. Nothing stirred. No dogs barked. No footsteps. I knocked again and I watched the windows to see if any of the curtains moved. I knocked again and I decided the house was empty.

  I walked around back. The house must have sat on a half-dozen acres. The yard behind it was tree free, and the sun hung bright in the sky. There was a back door and I knocked on it, but I got the same results as in front except this time my shadow was cut crisp against the side of the house, and I flashed Remote against the house. “Schort Way,” he said.

  “But ain’t nobody here.”

  “Not my problem,” he told me, and I put him away.

  I looked out toward the sun. At the far edge of the land there was a hedgerow of trees I didn’t know the names of. Leafless things on account of winter. The limbs of them clustered together like noise.

  I turned back to the house. I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted my wrist. It was unlocked. I leaned into it a bit, and the hinges coughed open, and the door swung into a dark and lonely abode. I stood there in the kitchen and breakfast nook. But there was no table or anything. The countertops were ancient. The linoleum floor seemed gummy. The refrigerator was a shape they don’t make anymore. My shadow cut across the room. Up to my waist was across the floor, the rest of me climbed a wall. My head was where my head would be if I was standing with my back to the wall, and I kind of looked my shadow in the eyes. It didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either.

  In the movies death has a terrible smell. Well, in certain kinds of movies. I guess in most movies people just die and the action goes on. But old death, detective-contemplated death, where, like, seasoned investigators cover their faces with a rag and new recruits puke at the crime scene—in those movies death is stinky. But I guess, owing to it being winter, my uncle didn’t stink. I found him in the living room. The second room I entered. The sun from the kitchen hung in shafts and dust danced in the otherwise stillness of the light, and it was like these odd corridors, and my uncle was sitting in a beam of it, his dead-opened eyes twinkling, his teeth shining in his frozen-opened mouth.

  There is nothing more still than dead people. I knew that from finding my mom. They seem so far away when you touch them. Like all the life they once had has retreated down to live in the marrow of their bones, but you can still feel the energy of it down there burning. Like a hot coal sunk down in mounds of ash the morning after a campfire. And the surface of them feels bizarre, because it’s not warm like it should be, not soft like it should be. The only thing like it is taxidermied deer. The kind that hunters hang the heads of on walls.

  My uncle’s pants were frozen with piss, the wood floor around him too.

  I kneeled to him and touched his chest. His clothes seemed miles above his lifelessness.

  I’d heard of cats dying with meows in their throats. Like you’d go to pick up a dead cat, and the jostling of its dead body would purge one final, bungled meow that slips from their mouths clumsily. And I pressed on my uncle’s chest, I guess, and a sort of “humph” purged from him, but I smelled his frozen breath.

  All of a sudden, the reality of it came shocking through the room. The whole place seemed to gag. Like the universe was puking. And I stood up and bounced back from my uncle, the dust rushing in the light now because of my disturbing it.

  “Fucking A,” I told myself. I put my hands on my face. I thought and thought.

  The biggest difference between Opioid, Indiana, and South Texas was timing. Well, and weather. Well, and the language and the color of the people. But there were tons of similarities. People were just people, you know. They came and went, they had children they loved. Yards they mowed. Things they hated. They ate food. They listened to music. I know these are trivial things, except they really aren’t. They hung US flags from their houses on Memorial Day. They went to church on Easter. Again, I know, but I don’t know.

  Opioid, Indiana, had happened. It had risen and gleamed but then it had fallen. You could tell it by the sag in the houses, the grit on the street signs. You could tell it by the slack faces on the dawdling junkies. You could tell it in the gray of the days. South Texas, on the other hand, was popping off. All the homes seemed to be fresh out of candy wrappers. All the streets seemed to sit new on the earth. The mall was clean. The bathrooms in houses weren’t drippy.

  Opioid, Indiana, had a yesterday feel. South Texas seemed primed for tomorrow.

  I don’t know how long my uncle had been dead, but he was longer dead than my mom had been when I found her. I thought that thought and wondered, who my age has done that before? Measured the death of one dead relative against another by the way they felt when you found them.

  I was happy, though, that my uncle wasn’t the first dead person I’d found. And then I thought: Totally healthy thought to think. You won’t have to work this out in therapy ever.

  My phone vibrated and I checked my texts.

  (317) xxx-xxxx: Find that place?

  Me: I’ll tell you when you tell me who you are.

  (317) xxx-xxxx: Bennet my struggler.

  Me: Then tell me whose phone.

  (317) xxx-xxxx: She made me promise.

  Me: Then I got secrets too.

  I held my phone and dropped on a knee next to my uncle, and I looked at my uncle, and then I looked at my phone. I was trying to decide what I should do.

  I had options.

  I could call the cops. This seemed like a not great idea for a few reasons.

  I had never called the cops before, and I wasn’t sure if on cell phones you just dialed 911 or what.

  I didn’t know if I was allowed to be out and about when suspended.

  What would I even tell them? That I’d found my days-old dead uncle who’d been missing for a stretch of time but who we hadn’t yet called the cops over?

  I could call Peggy, but what would I say to her? My gawd. It might be harder to talk to her about it than it would be to call the cops.

  I could text Peggy. But what would I text?

  “Found Uncle”

  “Uncle dead”

  A picture of his dead ass?

  I could leave. I could pretend I didn’t see anything. I could go home and just act like nothing had happened. Like I’d never seen a thing.

  I decided on option four. I think it was because it was the least work and because it meant I didn’t have to blame myself for whatever happened. I mean, everything up to that point had nothing to do with me. I hadn’t made any decisions. I hadn’t done anything. So, I decided that what I’d seen, I hadn’t seen. That it wasn’t real at all. That I would continue on like normal, and I headed for the door, but my phone jiggled in my pocket.

  I checked it.

  (317) xxx-xxxx: Can you pay me back for Black Panther. I’m broke. Moms is being stingy this month.

  Me: Shit, I’m broker.

  And I was. I had gotten paid from the gig at Broth, but now what the hell would Peggy and I even do. If there was a Peggy and I. Like, if my uncle was dead, I’d probably just get shipped off again. I looked back at my uncle crumpled against the wall.

  “Don’t fuck up, huh?”

  I don’t know, I got angry, and I walked back toward him, and I think I was about to put a shoe to his face, but then something dawned on me: I should check his pockets. It’s what they always did in movies. Someone dies, you check to see what they got.

  So, I dropped down to my uncle and started putting my hands in his clothes.
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  Nothing feels more bizarre than the pants pockets of a dead man. It’s a weird, unfortunate space. I went in and out of everything until I came to his wallet. It was fat with cash. There were some pills in his other pockets, but I didn’t want any part of that. And his phone lay beside him deader than him.

  I counted the bills. It was about $1,300. Enough for rent and some more. It felt weird, the money. Like old leaves. Like the skin of something mounted.

  The rest of the afternoon, I rode around on the streets through the cornfields. I didn’t know where to go. I just pedaled until the cold didn’t bother me anymore, until I couldn’t feel a thing.

  Now, here’s a thing I guess I didn’t think through. The Bicycling Confederate really loved his bicycle, and when you get your bicycle stolen, you go looking for it. Also, the dude had family. I figured he had sprung from earth. Like he rose up one year from a cornfield fully formed and emerged from the crops just before the combines swept across the lands, with his bicycle in tow and his flag already flying.

  I was out at the edge of Opioid, cruising, watching the sun crawl across the sky, breathing in the fresh farm air and letting my time pass. I’m not great at describing cold. It’s a newer sensation to me. I know heat like I know my skin. It holds you as if in manipulated time. A time that is slowed. A time that you meld with. You hover in it. Your molecules seem to stretch into a summer day, into a 100-degree scenario. Your water, the thing you are the most, abandons you to join the manipulated time. Your insides bubble to the top of you, purge and steam away against gravity. You pass through the shirt you’re wearing. You evaporate into the atmosphere.

  But cold? What does it really do? It clenches you. Your skin tightens away from low temperatures. You shrink and pucker. You dry up to ash. It’s supposed to be that the molecules stand still. But that’s not how it feels. Your hands race with ache. Your fingers tingle.

  Fingers never tingle in the heat.

  It’s a collapsing, the cold.

  If your body was a city in the cold, the buildings would implode.

  If your body was a city in the heat, the buildings would launch like rocket ships and streak out across the sky.

  All of this was spinning through my mind when an old F-250 pulled up and a shotgun was pointed at my head.

  “Get the fuck off that bicycle,” someone said, and I hit the brakes.

  Now, no one will teach you this, but if someone points a gun at your head, you have to pretend like it’s no big deal.

  The best rapper from Texas, which makes him one of the best rappers in the world, is Scarface. I knew how to handle the situation because of him. In “I’m Dead” on Mr. Scarface Is Back he tells a story about a crazy guy who stabbed someone with a knife just because their eyes showed fear.

  So, inside I was shitting my pants, which is a weird sensation when you’re on a bicycle, but outwardly I just kind of looked over at the guy who was holding the gun at my head and said, “Who me?”

  “You see another motherfucker on a bicycle?”

  I looked around. “Nah?”

  “Willy, get out the truck and get your shit.”

  The guy in the back seat of the driver’s side was the one talking at me, pointing the gun at me. The windows of the truck were deeply tinted, and I couldn’t see who was driving.

  “In the old days they hanged horse thieves,” the guy told me.

  “This ain’t a horse,” I told him.

  He chambered a round, which meant two things:

  Up until then I was relatively safe.

  After that, I was a finger waggle away from being a headless struggler.

  “Ain’t much different though,” he said.

  The Bicycling Confederate had gotten down off the truck and he’d come around to get his bike back.

  “Hey, Willy,” I said to him. I got off his bike and he took it away.

  “I think we should hang him,” said Willy. “Like in the old days,” he said.

  “Well, in the old days they woulda shot you for your Confederate flag for sure. If we’re, like, gonna be all old days about it.”

  “Fuck off, faggot,” the gun holder said. “Bet you voted Hillary.”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  Willy, he looked different when he wasn’t on his bicycle with his flag flapping. I kind of felt sorry for him. But then he screamed, “Shoot him!”

  “Calm down, Willy,” said the gun holder. “You got your bike.”

  “He hit me though.”

  The gun holder shrugged. “Put your bike in the bed,” he told Willy, and Willy did.

  The street was still. I was quiet. The F-250 idled chuggingly. The exhaust of it pumping away into the frozen air, floating out toward the winterized cornfields.

  Once Willy was back in the truck, they drove away.

  Walking after you get off a bicycle seems slow as fuck. The streets that would have streaked by earlier just tumbled beneath my feet, and the slow progress of it all got me thinking about my uncle. And my mother. And father. And me.

  Was it me?

  Did I make them all die?

  Listen, I’m not a good student but I know about causality, and I’ve read plenty of books. I’ve watched plenty of smart YouTube videos. Sometimes when I should’ve been doing homework. I understand relativity. I understand that time is a concept we’ve both invented and that exists. That it changes depending on where you are. That the present is not as simple as you’d think. That memories aren’t trustworthy.

  People around me die.

  They die for different reasons, but the outcome is the same.

  My dad died from working an unsafe job. My mom died from pain. My uncle died from trying not to feel pain.

  And maybe all of those are the same sort of thing.

  Like, there’s no way my father wanted to be a truck driver. There’s no way my mom wanted to be a widow raising a child alone. There’s no way my uncle wanted to be what he was.

  Was I the cause, somehow, for the deaths of everyone around me?

  My dad probably just drove trucks so he could do things like buy me bicycles. My mom probably felt overwhelmed by life, because she would have to raise me on her own. My uncle only had the money to OD because he got my checks.

  And it was a painfully cold walk, because the outside matched my insides. All gray and frozen. All despair and salted surfaces.

  Peggy spoke the moment I opened the apartment door.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  My cheeks felt like oysters and they stung when I got into the heated room. My hands burned in the warmth. “Nah,” I told her. “I’m tired.”

  “Wait,” she said, “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  But I brushed past her and went to my room. I got in bed. I wanted to sleep it all away.

  Then a knock came at the window. I went to open it. I knew it was Bennet.

  “You got that money?”

  “Yeah, hang on,” I told him.

  “Man, you look sad or something.”

  “Rough day.” I went for my pants to get him his cash.

  “What you need is some curly carrot leaf?” He looked at me with his bald head.

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Know what, man, fuck it. I don’t need the money. Keep it.”

  “It’s cool. Let me get it.”

  “Nah, nah.” He touched his head. “I can’t wait till this shit grows back.”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “You look better with hair.”

  “Wanna know something?” he told me.

  “What?”

  “You’re my best friend,” he said.

  I sort of looked at him. He was crouched there at the window. “What’s that about?”

  “I don’t know. Just thought about it. See ya,” he said. And then he was gone.r />
  “You too,” I said to the spot where he used to be.

  Friday

  Here’s how Remote says Friday got its name:

  When the rain of Thirstday finally stopped, the world had gone mud messy, and Remote couldn’t do anything without getting dirty.

  “This is the worst,” Remote said. I picked up my foot and looked at the clumps that clung to it. “It’s almost as bad as being thirsty.”

  Current problems are always worse than the problems you’ve solved. Remote sat in the muck and stared off at the puddles and grime. Remote couldn’t get motivated. Remote’s life seemed like a disaster.

  But just then, a woman I had never met waltzed into my village. She had a unibrow, and she was dressed in vivid colors, and she had an angry posture, and her hands were artist’s hands. “Is it true,” the woman said, “that you have the power to name days?”

  Remote thought. Was it a power I had? Was it anything?

  “Maybe,” said I. “Depends who’s asking.”

  The woman raised her chin. “I am Frida,” she said, “and I can fix your troubles.”

  “How?” Remote asked. I grabbed a fistful of mud, and squeezed it so that it dripped through my fingers. “This stuff is everywhere.”

  “Correct,” said Frida, “but you can solve sadness with work.”

  “Sadness?” said Remote, holding open my dirty palm. “That’s what you’d call this?”

  “That I’d call mud,” said Frida. “But the way it makes you feel. How you’re staring off at nothing and feeling sorry for yourself. That I’d call sadness. But all you have to do with sadness is remember that everything passes. To know that all things can yield other things.” Frida waved her hand over the earth, and a hibiscus sprang from the spot she had gestured to, and great hibiscus flowers as wide as dinner plates bloomed. They were the most brilliant pink imaginable.