by Leah Hampton
Because I have all this love. I feel it in me and around me like those electric sparks that come out of magicians’ hands in old movies. The sparks crackle and swell all the time, but he doesn’t see it spilling out of me.
I don’t understand that. Not at all.
“Oh?” James smiled back. He didn’t know. “So, what then, Miss Tennessee? What do you need to die happy?”
I sighed. I could see the trolley coming, a chain of long white golf carts strung together. They were hitched up loose, so the whole thing writhed like a huge maggot as it drove up. It turned from the entrance, from the ticket booths where we met Mavis, and came toward us.
“Take me to a hotel tonight,” I said.
I blinked hard. His face tilted; his eyebrows in three different positions each. I crossed my arms and stepped out to meet the trolley. It beeped and tooted all kinds of happy noises that echoed off the concrete and hurt my ears. “You do that,” I said. “You take me away for a night, just once, and I’ll go to my grave.”
I could feel the rattle in my voice coming, the quiver that rises when you’re about to cry, so I bit down and focused on the maggot stopping in front of us. A sharp laugh shot out of me.
“But that’s not going to happen, right? You’re not going to fuck some redneck. So.” I shrugged. “Guess I can’t die.”
I spat the last few words and climbed into an empty trolley seat.
“Goooood evening, folks!” the trolley driver chirped into the PA system. “We’ll be on our way just as soon as everyone gets on safely.”
Almost no one was waiting with us, but the trolley idled for a few minutes in case more people came looking for a ride. I don’t know how long it took before James finally sat down next to me. I don’t know if he stared at me, or laughed, or looked back at the eagle coaster and felt bad inside. I kept my eyes on the white floor of the maggot and waited to get hurt.
I sensed his electron warmth before too long. He scooted up close. The glinty shot glass I’d stolen had worked its way into the crevice between my hip and crotch. It sat there like a thick bullet.
“Elizabeth.”
“Just fuck off for a minute, James.”
“Awwwwwrighty folks,” the trolley driver chirped again. “We are taking off, and we’ll have you to your ve-hickles in no time. Please make sure your packages are secure, and hold on to your little ones.”
“Is it…” James nodded at a perky trolley attendant who was waving frantic goodbyes to everyone on the maggot. “Have you always felt like this?”
“Yep.”
We drove to Lot A and stopped. We were parked in Lot C.
“I’m shocked,” he finally said. His eyes widened and he turned toward me. “I mean, I’m flattered, but I’m just—shocked.” He touched his chest.
“How?”
“What?”
“How is that possible? How can you be shocked?”
“Well, I … Beth, you’re married.”
Pete. Fucking Pete. As if Pete counts as being married. Pete was an obstacle. He blocked everything. Pete could block the sun.
“You seriously don’t notice it? This?” I pointed back and forth between us until James’s eyes softened. “You never think about it.”
“Yes, sure. I’ve thought about it. Of course I have.”
“Lot B, folks. This is Lot B,” the driver announced.
“So what then? You don’t think it would work? You don’t even want a fling or anything? Jesus, why not get a little action when you’re in town, at least?” I was keeping it breezy, even now.
James stared straight ahead for a full minute, until I figured he hadn’t heard, or he’d never answer me. The trolley was approaching our lot when he spoke again.
“If we were both single, if I still lived here, sure, maybe. But Beth. That’s not the way things are. And Pete … you know.” He shook his head and grunted with a harsh edge I’d never heard before. The maggot came to a stop. “Pete’s a pretty good friend of mine.”
“So OK then, folks!” the driver shouted. “This is Lot C. Please step out on the right, and thank y’all for visiting us here in Dollywood! We hope you had a great time today. Come see us again.” The trolley radio squawked and fired up again. “Passengers going into the park, please step in on the left. Please secure your belongings and hang on to your little ones.”
There were no passengers going into the park, no little ones. James and I stepped out on the right, I think. I wasn’t paying attention, and I couldn’t see in front of me. My eyes were welled up and everything looked like frosted bathroom glass. I didn’t cry, though.
It didn’t take long to walk to the car. The lot was empty now. I held out my car keys to James and tried to keep my voice light. “You want to drive me home?”
He reached, curled his hand over the keys, and kept his arm held out to me for a long second. I looked at his fingers. They looked like mine, but stronger, more manly. I wanted to bend down and rest my cheek on them, soft like a newborn, for as long as I could, long enough to memorize his knuckles, the grooves at the base of his palm, how they felt against my skin. But I knew how girlish and strange it would seem, me bent double over somebody’s fist in a cold, empty parking lot, and for no reason. It wouldn’t mean anything to do it.
So instead I said, “We could take the back route, through the national park, instead of the interstate. It’s just as quick.”
It wasn’t just as quick, but I didn’t want to deal with all the traffic and neon signs in Gatlinburg or go too fast. The sky had been woolen all afternoon, and soon the daylight would be gone.
“Sure, Beth,” he said, more breath than words. And I figured that was nice of him. He would take the wheel and leave me be all the way home.
As we pulled out, I thought about Dolly’s gold jacket, how it floated on her like lacy sparkle wings, all the way down, almost to the floor. I couldn’t fit one arm into a jacket like that without ripping it. Then I thought about the silver particles floating in tubes in the lab James and Pete used to share, the glitter soup they’d make for their experiments. I liked when they made it, but I was never allowed to get too close because Pete said the particles were growing and forming, swapping and stealing atoms from each other, and even a fingerprint on the beaker could upset the balance.
All the delicate things in the world that shine like that. I looked back toward Dollywood, and I thought about all of them. They shine on their own, and they break if I ever try to get them in my hands.
About the Author
Leah Hampton is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. The winner of the University of Texas at Austin’s Keene Prize for Literature, she is also the recipient of North Carolina’s James Hurst and Doris Betts prizes for fiction. Her work has appeared in storySouth, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Appalachian Heritage, North Carolina Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times, Ecotone, and elsewhere. A former college instructor, Hampton lives in and writes about the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
FUCKFACE
BOOMER
WIRELESS
PARKWAY
TWITCHELL
MINGO
FROGS
DEVIL
QUEEN
MEAT
SAINT
SPARKLE
About the Author
Newsletter Sign-up
Copyright
F*CKFACE. Copyright © 2020 by
Leah Hampton. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by Samantha Russo
Some of these stories have appeared elsewhere, in slightly different form: “Meat” in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, August 21, 2019; “Parkway” in Ecotone, Winter 2018; “Boomer” in North Carolina Literary Review, vol. 26 (2018) online; “Sparkle” in Appalachian Heritage, Winter 2017; “Fuckface” in storySouth, Spring 2016; “Queen” in Appalachian Heritage, Summer 2014; “The Saint” in North Carolina Literary Review, vol. 22 (2013).
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Hampton, Leah, author.
Title: F*ckface: and other stories / by Leah Hampton.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2020. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040534 (print) | LCCN 2019040535 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250259592 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250259585 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3608.A695963 A6 2020 (print) | LCC PS3608.A695963 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040534
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040535
First Edition: May 2020
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this collection either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.