And the absolute worst thing is that, like, back at that motel, back there before we bought this car from that farmer dude, I fucking lost that really expensive lipstick I got. That black lipstick that cost like forty bucks or whatever and I’m not kidding when I tell you, I wept more for that little plastic tube than when Carter was first taken away from me—cause, after all, when Services came, I was like: THIS BITCH IS FINALLY FREE FROM THE BURDEN—like know what I mean—like to be totally honest with you that’s what I thought—like give me some time to rediscover the miraculous beauty of who I am or whatever, you know?
And so when I look at my kid, I see the beauty and all that possibility, right? But I also see all the fucking murder and misery planted like a fucking seed or a fucking cocoon or whatever—like a motherfucking nest of spider eggs—like, like, it’s fucking genetics, man—no joke—right there in that little guy—I mean, Carter, my kid—all the hurt and murder and love and beauty or whatever of the world—that’s him right now asleep with his head on Shane’s shoulder like, totally asleep and the one light in this world is the light of this car moving through the darkness and the one keeping this light alive is me right now with my foot on the pedal right to the floor and Brit beside me with her eyes big as a fucking couple nuclear explosions staring out that windshield cause we’re stoned as shit on Shane’s pills and like totally feeling the vibe right now.
Man, remember when that sucker MC, Hot Shit, ran for election in T Dot?
Fucker’s election signs were everywhere—and the album he released back before he announced, like, all in Liberal red and white? Like, they call that foreshadowing, motherfucker.
Same time, the CEO is like killing the primaries down south, right? Just like, totally trouncing Bush Junior and the Clinton tradition, who had also put out that lame-ass album—the one with like the Appalachian coal-miner chorus shit with the Euro beats? Remember? Cause the CEO was like third party? And the Bush album was all spoken word—like Biblical shit?
And the people saw right through that shit—like for real, that’s why the CEO won—you can put out any kinda album you want saying you identify with shit, but hitting the right notes don’t mean a damn thing if they know you’re just branding, right?
Like what do a few billionaire families know about working in a coal mine, or God, or some shit like that, when everyone knows based on hard fact they’ll just sell you out before the oath on inauguration day is done.
So that’s how The Unifying Theory came together—that’s my album—but it ain’t finished yet. You have to experience shit to write, know what I mean?
Like, what options does anyone have anyway, you know? Like, fucking robots bag your groceries and a drone the size of a beer can delivers your mail. Politician, Agent or rapper basically is all you got, G, for real, and there’s no way Skeet Love is gonna taste the devil’s dick so you can forget that shit like yesterday.
Robots and bombs seriously—what’s fucked is that the government wants these things destroyed cause that way they have to buy more, know what I mean? Blood keeps this whole world rolling, but it ain’t for the people—ain’t no jobs or shit like that coming—ain’t no jobs period, bitch—except to be a rapper like seriously—a dog’s only job is to bark.
So like, there’s no diff between my world and yours like—yours—like know what I mean?—so the best thing for me and my family, like Nina and Brit and Carter, is like straight-up murder or whatever—like the best book of poetry ain’t like Eminem or whatever—the best book of poetry in the world is like not written yet, but basically it’s like me saying how I’m gonna fucking murder you—like death threats, yo, like the best poetry this bitch ever read or could sometime in the future, like, write—so like fuck you or whatever, did I stutter?
Somewhere in the countryside they park the car. Shane checks the map. The last few days he’s gotten skinnier. The thin bones at his wrists protrude. Watching him, Brit is reminded of something mechanical—thin pistons working under a skin of rubber. In the dim dome light, he scans the paper. In some distant town, behind the crest of a hill, beyond the reach of their vision, the sounds of fighting. An explosion they feel more than hear. The tree line backlit by a quick burst of light.
The night above their heads filled with stars and satellites—a glossy ultrasound printout of the womb.
Brit is going to bleed, and soon, Nina will too. That’s how they call it—not their periods or whatever other euphemism someone came up with. It started months ago, back at the apartment, Nina saying—Fuck, man, this bitch is gonna bleed heavy—her hand on her abdomen, and Brit suddenly felt the very same way.
With the GPS and the radio cut, there’s no way of knowing what’s happened, Shane saying at the time, If the world’s gone to shit, it’s still better than being found—it’s better than being dead.
They pull back onto the road, the gravel beneath the tires whispering to them.
The ocean, Shane says, it’s freedom, know what I mean? And that’s where we gotta get.
There’s no observable evidence of the chase, but they all feel there is one. In the strange blood dark outside the car, a pulse in the air. A quiver amongst the limbs of the trees that stretch up into the sky. Looking out her window, Brit sees the dark veins, the grave black filaments of branches.
And now Shane takes the car off the back road where they’d been and onto some narrow overgrown gravel path. The branches scratching at the windows and doors. The soft hiss of shrubbery at a fender.
Here in the valley, emerging from the darkness surrounding them—the ramshackle beaten-down frame of a house.
So anyway Brit doesn’t like to talk about this shit with anyone. It’s because of her dad and like, yeah, he’s a mechanic or whatever, but like ever since she was a little girl—I mean like ten years ago, man—her dad made her study some weird shit, and before she dropped out and took off—au revoir or whatever to the corner-store wine and smoking at the Catholic school playground in Grade 6—like back in the day—like I’m sorry?—but, it’s, like, chess? Or whatever? Like? Chess? You know?
Back when she was a little girl—her and her friends were cheerleaders in the Santa Claus parade—her Dad saying what the fuck’s up with my daughter in a super-short CFM elf dress—and Brit being like, DAD YOU ARE SO GROSS!—but it was true—that whole sexualized-child thing—obviously by now, given her previous employment, Brit knows what the sick fuckers want—but anyway, chess!
That game with the knights and the queen and the king and like black and white and good and evil?
When the CEO came to power, he put all chess players under surveillance, so it’s super down low, okay?—And anyway, Brit wants you to know she’s never even seen a queen’s gambit so fuck off and I never wanna talk about that shit ever again alright?
Chess—like checkers for professors, that’s what Dad called it, you know?
Like, he’d say, It’s space and time except not random enough?
But nobody knows this shit, and know what?—neither do you, you fucking narc.
Something that she loved about it, and that she loves remembering, is the black half-moons under her dad’s nails as he taught her the moves.
For a long time it was just Brit, her dad, and her grandmother—Nanny! Brit would scream from her crib—and Brit knew the alphabet and her shapes and could count to twenty before she was two—her Nanny would say, We’ve got a bright one on our hands—so how did that go so wrong Brit would like to know?—and anyway, Dad would only say about Mom that he hoped she was doing better so that was kinda like, Brit’s entire family history right there.
The black half-moons—her dad’s hands—that smell of the garage, like the gasoline and the grease, like where he works, you know what I mean, would be on his hard hands, and car exhaust and some kind of chemical smell clinging to his beard? Like, Brit can hardly even handle the gas station when they stop to fill up.
And even worse, once in some small town, while Shane was filling the tank, she saw
some dude in the side-view—she saw some like skinny dude come out with a Coke cradled in the crook of his arm, and like he was like Shane’s age but he had a beard like Dad and was in these blue coveralls smeared in grease and was wiping his hands in a rag? And she almost died? Thinking of her dad! Like, waah!
Like, pauvre-bebe-paurvre-sange-mon-petite-sangelittle-ape-girl-I-miss-you-Dad-forever-heart-exploding? Like, you know what I mean by that?
But anyway: the queen—like, the most beautiful and elegant and graceful and just like murderous thing in the world. The slender neck of a swan, right? Like deadly, man, seriously.
What’s that sword called? The one where the handle’s just like a brocade of jewels or whatever? Like pirates or some shit stab each other with them, or like fairy-tale princely dudes will cut the buckles of your corset with the tip and then your like totally perfect titties are out and he can’t control himself and shoves his face right into your cleavage?
Anyway she’s like that, the queen is.
A total rapier.
Like, a rapier, that’s the word.
And all those other dumb-man pieces. The knight, the bishop, the rook—like just bumbling around the stage all day? Like can you imagine?
Once she showed Shane the little travel board she’d taken from home when she ran away—and he was like, Yo, like I’m the king! And she was like, Shane, he’s the dumbest-ass piece in the whole game like—he’s just this helpless sack of shit.
And Shane just shut his mouth like a trap.
But of all the pieces, she felt worst for the pawns.
They drop like flies, and if they could only make it to the other side, then they become whatever they want—they were her second fave—but what pawn would wanna be a king?
She wanted them to live and grow, you know?
Like, transformation or whatever?
And her dad would say shit about, like, the best games and the best players and shit like that, right? How they were all crazy and shit?
And his favourite player was this Russian dude named Tal, but Brit always called him Tall or whatever but he was actually Latvian and actually like sickly and frail and not tall at all. And Dad always said the thing about him was that he’d just do the craziest shit on the board—like sacrifices, right?—a rook here, and a knight there, sometimes a queen, and it would always or at least mostly work out for him.
But now, because of computers, they know that his mind was faulty, right?
He was a genius but his logic was flawed.
But the way he was and the way he played, it freaked out and fucked up the people he played and they’d just succumb to the insanity, right? They’d resign—and Brit liked that—like, they were resigned to the way things turned out or whatever.
The vortex, right—like maybe how we are with Shane right now, but whatever—insanity, right—like a black hole or some shit like that.
And when Tal was dying he up and jumped out the window of the hospital to play some grandmaster dude who had come to town to visit before he croaked or whatever?
But the main thing was that Tal wasn’t afraid to take chances.
And that’s what her dad said to her.
Take chances.
And that’s how she ended up leaving home.
Just like Tal did—up and out the window one night, leaving a note for Daddy saying like, DON’T DO NOT DON’T WORRYYYYYY DADDEEEEEEEEEEEE BISOUX BIS BIS BISOUX BRITNEY, only now maybe she’ll die some fucking shitty death, you know?
Like Tal did in some hospital bed but maybe worse.
Like maybe a gang of dudes will take turns fucking her ass with the end of a hammer and then club her to death with it?
And Dad will probably blame himself for the rest of his life?
She knocked around her neighbourhood for a few weeks—like so many parties, so many boys, so many girls.
If there’s one image she remembers most she really couldn’t remember but she thinks it might be like cigarette burns in the carpet or the tiles in the bathroom of one of the houses she partied at?
But anyway, she followed Tommy the tattoo guy to T Dot or whatever.
For something to be at, Shane would have said in that fake accent he sometimes busts out.
She’d written her dad a postcard saying: I’M ALIVE.
The Lockheed-TexaBucks Tower pointing up into the blue.
Like, almost exactly where that long-ago satellite had plunged from.
Like, that satellite we mentioned, like, way back on page thirteen? That’s right, motherfucker, thirteen. Coincidence? Think about it.
But anyway she went back home and worked for a while in front of a webcam, and then split that shit once she’d gotten the mods done with the cash she made and the whole time she felt like she was just running running running away from she didn’t even know what—and that’s life, you know?
But life is also like you’re driving a car top speed like they are, and you know there’s a cliff up ahead somewhere, and you know you’re just gonna go right off that sucker only you don’t know when it’s gonna happen—only that it will happen. It will totally happen.
But this shit right now is too much, and she’s seriously scared maybe for the first time ever. Like ever ever. You know?
And so like, Now what Brit? she asks herself, looking at Shane’s sleeping face in the gloom.
Now you’re stuck with this world.
Or maybe not.
In the dim woodstove kitchen of this house, wind through the gaps of the boards and still, it must be hours now that they’ve been listening to the sound of distant drums and booms like bloody war echoing up from the valley nearby where they saw that flash and the rattle of fighting and shouts, and there’s that smell in the air like smoke that has nothing to do with the wood that burns and pops so sweetly beside them all. The green smell of the woods around them is tinged with something else like ash or something else even that seriously, man, makes Brit tremble where she lays.
I don’t know what it is.
Maybe just this house.
Me and Carter spooning and my God he’s so big now.
Like I dunno what—but the men are coming for us.
Hordes of them, know what I’m saying?
I can smell this wet dirt smell and this whole fucking place tilts in the wind and fills with air like a sail or a lung except black like you’ve smoked for a hundred years.
They smell like that.
And they’re like thick, man, like seriously. Thick everywhere, these men. And Shane’s gone like a stick on me now and it’s almost too much.
They are coming. Like for real they are. And somewhere behind them there’s fire burning in the distance.
It’s like the mob from Frankenstein or whatever.
Like what kind of monster is that?
Like what have thou wrought, know what I mean?
It’s like Biblical shit, and it’s like creation.
Every parent wonders the same thing.
Like, Carter before he was taken away would sit with his Cheerios in the high-chair and I’d look into his eyes and wonder who and when he’d rape somebody.
Like, not if.
She feels Carter’s lungs filling with air and emptying again.
Sees in her mind the thin fibrous tissues like roots underground, branches against a night sky.
The stars in their heavens—a network, the dots of Morse code.
Billions of cold eyes.
A constellation of screens through which men in far-off rooms watch their every move, fly drones overhead, plan the weather, the next election.
When the floods began she was just a little girl. Videos showed refugees huddled in rain. Trudging through shit and muck and everything else. Life jackets sent out emblazoned with the logos of Walmart, the Seal of the President of the United States of America.
Perpetual crisis, and if it seemed things were going to let up, someone would just invent something else to worry about. It was a relentless churning insid
e her. Constant war and worry. Everyone trembling in their tiny rooms in the cities.
After she’d left home, met first Leo, and then Shane, her sister began sending postcards from the Midwest with tourist destinations on one side, and the words I AM AFRAID on the other. Likewise, clippings from newspapers and flyers from supermarkets that all seemed to say the same thing: THE END IS NIGH.
Like,
TAKE-STOCK-OLYPSE FOR THE APOCOLYPSE!!!
THREE HEADED DOG FOUND AT DUMP!!!
CHILDREN BORN WITHOUT BRAINS!!!
That summer: at the party where she fell in love with Shane, they were in Leo’s kitchen listening to Biggie Smalls. Shane, shirtless, pointed out the dagger tattoo on his left wrist, complained about the heat, said he loved Arturo Gatti and David Lemieux and Sean O’Sullivan, pounded a can of Wild Cat and, once Leo (as he always did) passed out in his bedroom with the TV on bust, raised an eyebrow at her and said, Sup, Nina? Sayin?
Those raised eyebrows of his—it’s his thing.
It happened right there on the kitchen table.
Nina saying to him I’m a freak. I’m nasty. I don’t give a shit—knowing it was just what he wanted to hear—while Carter, face to face with his cartoons on the TV in the living room, hadn’t yet even been potty-trained.
Carter had his father’s eyes.
Leo’s eyes. It was hard to look at them.
All her old fuck buddies—some of them dead; others, she supposed, still out there somewhere—but it was like a different universe than the one she was in now.
Even seeing Leo like she had before they split T Dot, it was like he was someone else. Like, not real, I guess. Like that clone shit Shane talks about—everyone and everything just a copy of someone or something else.
Skeet Love Page 6