Photo by David Navarro

I didn’t understand the indelible nature of lust, how decades later it would mark me like a drunken tattoo—high on grapefruit vodka, the violet lure of the neon sign, the buzzing of the needle before it seared skin. Sometimes, in the hours of night made bleak by solitude, I pull back blinds and imagine—in the empty Adirondack on my deck—a former lover, one of several in the years I’ve been single. Not the most important, just the most recent. Tonight, I will sit with that ghost. Small talk will be irrelevant. I’ll listen for nothing but my own breath: each exhalation a question, each inhalation a precise and unalterable answer. From a distance, the deck will look like a raft on a calm sea. But the solitary bulb will cast shadows like abstract art—intuitive and indecipherable—and the heavens will remain shrouded by clouds. How impossible to navigate without a single star.

Lavonne J. Adams lives in the coastal community of Wilmington, North Carolina, where she teaches as she writes. She received the 2007 Pearl Poetry Prize for Through the Glorieta Pass, “documentary poetry” based on women who travelled the Santa Fe Trail in the mid-1800’s. Her life is a little less adventurous, though she has spiced it up a bit with residencies at the Harwood Museum of Art and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, as well as the Vermont Studio Center. Journal publications include Sojourn, New South, and Missouri Review.

When Diskus hoisted his case and stepped outside, he felt late.  And Green Bay was out of Super Bowl contention already. Shake it off.

Nancy probably wouldn’t talk to him for a week. Shake that off, too. His sobriety? He’d already shaken that off. The street was filled with black grit and slush. Snow lay like old manna on strips and patches of grass. Up the street, pitch and run. Sell. Tune in. Make it.

“Look, just bear with me a minute,” he told the short, shiny man, wiping the snow from a parked car. “How many ways do you know to boil an egg? One. How many ways to chew it? One. You sleep, you wake up, you chew your eggs the same way every time.”

The little man was listening. He was buying, Diskus knew.

“Break your wife out of the ordinary. Surprise her. No occasion. It’ll mean a lot to her. The gold chain is worth $15.00 by itself.” Diskus proffered a delicate pendant set.

The man’s twenty bucks made almost half of seventy, his goal for this morning. Diskus pocketed his money and headed down the street. He fished for rhythm, pitch, swagger.  He imagined himself at the next door.

You sing when you’re by yourself, lady? You used to. What’s it going to take to get that back? Time’s eating you up. Look at yourself. Maybe you don’t feel the teeth yet. Sing or you die like a bug. You used to sing all the goddam time. Couldn’t shut you up.

Nancy had sung a lot.  Before they were married, they’d sung together.  Mamas and Papas.  Yardbirds.  Belafonte.  All kinds of things.  She even knew some Sinatra and Patsy Cline.  But she’d closed up as his luck turned; when he lost his shirt and then the storefront on Wabash.

He picked the next door because of the curtains in it, the newish Beamer out front, the frosty but manicured garden.  He knew, as he knocked, that he was stuck in his head; he should have waited; should have gotten his pitch back first.

When the door opened, he said:  “If you have a moment, ma’am, I want to say change is the main thing.

Quick change.  Newness and speed.  Absolutely central in a livable life.  Curiosity, surprise, variety, excitement, discovery.  You’ve got to keep the human eye moving or it won’t last a week.”

His audience was a fragrant woman of about forty.  Either a young grandmother or an old mom, he thought, after glimpsing a basket of Legos through the door.

“What’s that?”  she said.  “I’m sorry, keep going,” she said, with a small smile.

A radio in the background said:  “In high school hoops, Independence High meets Roosevelt tonight, it’s Madison at Winona.”

“I mean that Hollywood and television and newspapers don’t just help pass the time.  They are time.  If it weren’t for them, every minute would be just like every other minute and time would stop.  Aging wouldn’t be a problem; people would be too bored to notice.  You’d die as old as you were born, for all you’d care or know. Fashions, advertising, reporters; they’re all beating their brains out to keep you alive.”

“I don’t think I quite get it.”  She said.  Her smile was tentative.  She had wrinkles around her eyes, freckles in the usual places.  Her eyebrows crowded down.  “Really, what do you want?  I’m freezing with this door open.”

He took her money.  She went for hoop earrings.  Ten bucks was ten bucks.

Sure, he was attracted to her.  But he had seen himself in the mirror this morning.  Guts in a sack.  Sloping shoulders.  He had a white sickle-shaped scar on his ribs from a Korean bayonet and hard gravel lumps of tissue from sloppy shrapnel repair.  Does anyone even know what a sickle is anymore?  Shake that off, too.

He and Nancy had an arrangement. He would try to be gone by 7:30 A.M.  After that, she’d get made up for her day at her beauty salon, four chairs, with nails.  Before last night, he’d been on the wagon for thirteen months. She used to say things to him occasionally when he walked through the bedroom.

He’d gotten married seventeen years ago, at fifty, when he was still skinny and strong, like a wise-but-wired, stud-looking paperboy.  So what’s seventeen years in dog years?  An eternity.  Nancy had her friends and the shop.  He ate his own cooking, washed his own dishes, bought his own toothpaste.  And he almost used to drink.

He had his case by its big double handles.  Shake it off, he told himself.  Pick it up.  Tune in, here and now.  He headed south.

His feet slapped pavement and he hummed a razzy tune.  Big flappy feet and the tune was 20’s, 20’s, 20’s, no, by God, 1931.  Green and pink tweed jacket, rubble nose, baggy pants and humming 1931.  He stopped at the tail of his dirty green Rambler wagon.  “So there you are,” he said to the car.

He had drunk hard last night.  He had nursed a cranberry and soda and swapped a few stories at the Vets’ Hall, until the TV 4 News Anchor said:  “Seventy-one year-old Korean War veteran Frank Cole died today.  He was one of only a handful of remaining GI’s who were captured at the fall of Taejeon, almost fifty years ago.”

Diskus hadn’t known the soldier’s name, but he and some of the others knew some guys in the 24^th Infantry and Diskus had seen nearby Osan go down, himself.  That is, at seventeen years old, he had been trucked out on his back, bleeding, as it fell.  The white office buildings, homes and warehouses billowed black smoke into the sky in the distance.  He remembered the grenade blast that got him.  No idea about the bayonet though.

That must have come after.

They shared a round for Frank Cole and, then, another for other fallen brothers.  As the rounds came and went, his head filled with the whiskey fog.  Somehow, he knew that the Timberwolves lost to the Panthers 98 to 108.  Before long, he cupped his heavy chin in one hand and propped it on the bar.  Bright thoughts gleamed and rolled by him, like pinballs out of reach of the flippers.

Determined to leave, his bar-world whirling, Diskus heaved himself to his feet, hands flat on the counter.  He reminded himself to try to remember in the morning to think about where he’d left the station wagon.

“Spring Training is only 58 days away,” said the Ten O’clock News.

Somehow, he had made it home on foot.

From under the front seat of the Rambler, he pulled yesterday’s dented steel thermos of coffee, poured the contents into the shiny top.  All the time, pitch and run.  He opened the passenger door and sat down.  Better get out there.  Two cold swallows of coffee.  The sun was working its way up and light covered his lap and made him sad.  Tired of being an odd-looking joke.  From under his feet, he pulled a blanket onto his lap.

To them, I’m always just a peddler.  He was already drowsy.  He scrunched so his ear was down onto the soft, worn backrest.

Selling jewelry was relaxing at first.  But now even the cheap plated junk was getting to him.

Before that, he’d sold Bibles energetically, but he quit when the verses, the heavy scary lines, had started lacing his dreams.  God’s angry voice began to voice-over his private life.  He felt like a punk teenager getting chewed out by a grownup.  Anger, disapproval, guilt.

He decided faith wasn’t slack thinking.  It was a grab at hope, set against the pain-hot real impossibility of being loved.  That was Hell.  Buy my Bible, baby.

He used to drink part-time to keep any sales pitch from taking over his mind full-time.

God, for some whiskey to steady him.  He longed to be solid and happy, slow dancing in place with his hands on the hips of some straight, thick tree.  Some room above the street, away from everybody, watching night traffic; slowly breathing booze.

He snarled now, asleep.  He watched himself, a boy, watching back.  Not a care.  The blue sky spread out above thirteen year-old summertime him.  The farm and the smell of cows and weeds and wheat dust and the caws of crows.  As a boy, he had hunted crows, their calls fresh in the air.  Boom!  The signal from the house that they had company.  Ten minutes later, he had a visitor, a family friend: a girl.  He showed her how to hunt. They sat on the edge of the field, under the trees, to wait and whittle and watch.  They held hands then and kissed; small tight little mouths.  He let her hold the shotgun.  They would swim for a little.  Through the trees, along the stream, in mushing sod, onto the cracking dry logs at the edge of the pond.  A pile of clothes by the tree.  He swam in his skivvies.  She quietly pulled over her shirt.  Forever in a day.

Diskus sat up slowly, looked at the Texaco station across the street, rusty pumps, a heap of scuffed bald tires. 

Where am I going?  How long have I got?  The sun had disappeared and rain spattered the windshield.

Windshield wipers clacking, the road shining and splashing, he drove the Business route down between the warehouses.  A lighted reader board said:  07-03.  Which inning?  Had the White Sox won?  The Business Route crossed the Burns Bridge toward the liquor store and its shopping center.

On the sidewalk, near the middle of the windy bridge, a woman in a black-and-white cape and wide brim hat stooped over two dress boxes, snatched them up, threw them over the side toward the river.  Then, both hands on the railing, she sank to her knees.

It was still raining.  He stopped.  The woman looked up angrily, swiped him away with her hand.  He got out and sat on the hood, ignoring the splash of the raindrops, felt the engine idling under his wet seat.

“I’ve got plenty of room, if you’d care to ride, Miss,” he said.

She looked away through the railing.  “Go away.”

He sat for a moment, then got back in his car.  His butt was cold and wet and tried to stick to the seat, as he slid in.  He drove the rest of the bridge and parked on a side street.  He dug a dirty white Bible out from under the back seat.  He wiped it on his sleeve as he walked back.

The woman hadn’t moved.  He watched her as he approached.  Her hands and cheeks and chin and arms were puffy with fat.  But she did have a good-natured comely look.

“I want you to have this,” he said, holding out the Bible.  “It’s dirty, but it is vinyl covered, so it should clean up.  It’s got a concordance and finger-tabbing, a zipper, a place in the middle for a family history…” He paused for her to comment.

She didn’t.

“They say it contains words of strength for those who contemplate the river,” he said.  “Not that I’ve read it,” he added.  He just held out the Bible and smiled.

“Don’t smile at me like that, you old clown, patting yourself on the back.  I’ve got business here, so shove off and take your sermons with you.”

“Alright,” he said.  He dropped the Bible over the edge of the bridge like he was tossing it onto a shelf.  She jumped up and yelled and leaned over the railing and together they watched it fall for a long time and make a tiny splash.

“You’re a fool,” she said, but she grinned.  “Why are you trying to do me this big favor?” she asked.

He kept trying to face her now, but like a gyroscope, his head kept turning away, his eyes to the river.

“Beats working,” he said.  They both gave a short laugh, sobered and were silent.  Somehow she’d bought it. 

Bought what? he thought.  They started walking.  He maneuvered to be by the railing.

He liked her strutting, overweight walk.  They kept the same pace.  She was taller than he was, her shoulder swayed level with his ear.  She looked morose.  He felt the tension in her. Her eyes were steady.  The safest people he knew had mobile eyes.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Diskus,” he said.

“First or last?”

“Last.  It’s what I go by.”

“I’m Ruth.”  She paused.  “My husband ran off.”

My god, he thought, is that all?

“He lost his job two months ago.  He just waited until we ran up our line of credit and then took off.  And what are we supposed to do for food?”  She only half looked at him. 

“I’m step mom to his three kids.  Three!  And I don’t want any of them, by myself!  Before you came, I was up on the rail.  Couldn’t say goodbye, somehow.  I don’t know.  I’m so stupid.  I just came from buying more dresses on another store account!  Every other night a guy calls from the bank and tries to give me lip.  I was going to jump with those dresses, but I pictured myself hugging them and falling and saw everything soaking in the water and I hated them for meaning so much to me.  So I threw them over the side.  And then I hated myself for being so touchy and stupid and wasteful.”  She glared at him and took his arm like it was a rope. 

“At least you’re going to treat us to a meal before you disappear.”

And he followed.  “I know a good little Samaritan restaurant…”

She smiled at him and held a twenty-dollar bill at arm’s length in front of his face.  He grabbed into his front pocket, but the twenty was gone.  “That’s pretty lousy,” he said,  “and it was already a lousy day.”

“Look, sweetie, you can leave when you want, but I’m keeping your money.  I’m lucky to see this much in a week anymore.  Eat with us if you want.”

He stopped outside Jerry’s tavern.

She looked at the tavern door, surprised, then smiled and nodded.

He held the door from well inside.

The TV at the bar was talking Sports:  “the San Jose Sharks are in town tonight to take on the …”

He let her lead the way to a small plywood booth in the dark of the back.

He ordered a pitcher and they talked, mostly about her husband.  After the second pitcher came, he took her hands, fat with short fingers, in his leathery, baggy-skinned hands.  They would both soar into speech at times.  She talked about being twenty-one and only 12 pounds too heavy to be a flight attendant and reading biographies of jockeys for weight-loss tips.  She told him about the weed she had dreamed she was, that lived in a path and thrived on the crush of hooves and heels and wheels.  And he amazed himself by telling her of his dead marriage and his loneliness, of almost dying in Korea and never being sure of the next dollar.

Diskus’ veins pumped with a new pudding.

He blushed in the dark for being of all things out of words.  She would look down seeming unable to look at him.  He talked about his doll collection. She sought his eyes then, to see if he was serious.  He laughed at her.  She laughed back and hugged him to his feet.

He held out his hand.  They got two pizzas, the largest at the bar, and a carton of Coke and left.  One block and across the street, they went up to a cluster of apartments, up worn wooden stairs.

The kids were famished and got both pizzas if they ate in front of the TV in the common room down the hall.

Slumped in front of the apartment’s main window, behind the sofa, they watched first, then clutched arms, then kissed big, old, fat, sloppy lips and wet and strained.  Then sideways on the floor in a snarl of legs and an open dress and he eased her breasts out.  Her fingers undid his shirt and found the sickle shape on his ribs and followed it gently.

Such breasts she had; they were fat and white and heavy.

Yet he stroked her and she liked him and they were beautiful.

He kissed each one tenderly.

She sensed him pulling back into himself a bit and said:  What’s the matter?  The kids?”

“No; I was just thinking we should slow down, that’s all.”

“That usually means ‘Goodbye.’  Are you getting ready to leave?”

“You know, you are not the failure here; he is.” He said.  “He is.”

She leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. “Don’t go there,” she said.

“I know him.  I am him,” Diskus said.  “Impatient.  Full of expectations.  Waiting for the next burst of feeling. 

Lots of disappointments that take even more activity to avoid.  A workaholic to fill the spaces between bursts of extra intensity.  Always some crisis at work.  Crises that are good for his adrenaline.    And then he lost his job.  He’s spinning now.  Add on desertion and theft.”  Diskus paused.  “I’ll bet he’s a baseball fan.”

“The Reds,” she said dully.

“With me it’s the White Sox.  To this very minute.”  He was excited now.  “Look: when you’re dying inside, time is agony.  Like dog whistle pain torture that won’t stop.  You try to blot it out.  You focus on things that don’t hurt as much.”

She had opened her eyes and was watching his face.

“Take the White Sox. Every game, every score, is like the rung of a ladder.  After a while, every trade, every mention on a talk show was another rung of my ladder that led me through time, passed the time.  It’s a Pass Time!”  He almost shouted.  “That’s it!”  He was really pleased and smiled at her.

She couldn’t help smiling.  “Like shopping?” she asked.

“Probably,” he said.  “And it’s exhausting, trying to climb every minute of the day and night.  So some people jump.”

They were both quiet a minute.

“I think I do have to go,” he said.

“It’s past time,” she said.

He missed her joke until he was behind the wheel of the Rambler again.  He snorted appreciation.

He got to the Salon, “Nancy’s”, as the streetlights still flickered on.  The shop had closed twenty minutes ago, so there was parking in front.

As he pulled up, a radio announcer introduced a panel of experts.  The British anticipated a scaled-back Olympics with small crowds and big debts.  An American caller challenged them.  “The sports public is counting on the international diversity and suspense of the games…”

He snapped off the radio. “I’ve got a life,” he said.

He let himself in with his key, rather than pull Nancy away from whatever she was doing.

There was music.  Kenny G.?

She was cleaning the mirror at her own station, up on a short stool.  She stopped with her rag arm on the glass above her head.  “Hello, John,” She pretended a lack of surprise.

“It looks real nice in here, Nance.  Feels comfortable,” he said.

“Everybody keeps it up,” she said.  “It’s easy with a little teamwork.”

“How’s business?  I mean,” he waited because he felt that had come out too cold and too abrupt.  “Does it still make you happy?”

She finished spraying and wiping the mirror and got down.  She faced him.

“Yes, still.  I guess I’d like helping people look good whether they paid me or not.  And we’ve got 20-30 regulars.”

She waited for him now.  He had come to her.

“Why didn’t you ever leave me?”  Diskus asked, suddenly.  “I was a beached whale.  I wasn’t going anywhere.  I had nothing.  But you…”

“John.”  She said.  “When I make a choice, I stick with it.  Better or worse.”

He just hung there.  Like a watched pot, the next moment just wouldn’t boil.  Slowly, he reached an arm out around her shoulder and she shifted gently into his embrace.  They hugged for some time.

He had time.  For once, he didn’t need to be anywhere else.

Erik Svehaug lives and writes in Santa Cruz, California, a vacation town he created as a child. He has been in Static Movement, Bartleby-Snopes, Linnet’s Wing, and Meta-Zen. His story, Tempeche, is in the Outlaws Chapbook at Bannock Street Books. He will be in the next issue of Ampersand. Flashes he wrote were mentioned honorably in Binnacle UltraShorts competitions in 2008 and 2009.

On the Television, an infomercial audience is clapping. That must have been what woke you.  No.  There is knocking, so you walk to the door. It’s Emily. She’s giving you a ride to the airport so you can visit your parents for Christmas.  There’s no telling how long she’s been standing on the front step, but judging from the knocking it’s been a while.  She’s mad, furious, standing out in the frigid December morning as the wind nips up her shirt and gives her flabby stomach goose bumps.  These are your last moments in Montana.

“Your cell phone’s turned off again,” she says as she brushes the cold off and heads for the furnace.  “Jesus, you’re twenty-three.”

“Oh?” you say.  It’s probably for the best, you decide.

Theodore, the twenty-five-year-old with braces and a nine millimeter, has been leaving threatening voicemails for a week.

“Are you packed yet?”

“No.”

“Shit, Gerard, you’re going to miss your flight.” She rushes to your bedroom, grabs your suitcase from the corner, and starts picking up clothes that lay scattered on the floor. She stuffs them into the bag without folding. This pisses you off, but you don’t say anything. As she packs, you look at the room you’ve been living in for three years. There is a leaning tower of boxes, a musty towel, and a nest of blankets lying in the corner by your pillow. There is no bed, no chair, no dresser, and no exercise bike.

When Emily is finished, you go to the bathroom and get on your knees. You pray that you don’t drink or get high.

You walk with her to the car. It smells worse than usual. You scoot over a heap of crumpled fast food fry cartons and sit. The cold, cracked vinyl of the seat touches your skin between your jacket and jeans. You shiver. Her heater doesn’t work. It’s going to be a cold twenty minutes to the airport.

The sun rises in an orange blast on Emily’s side. Instead of noticing the miracle of it all, or marveling at the horses prancing in the field blowing clouds from their nostrils like dragons, you focus on how you fat she looks. She’s gained twenty pounds since dumping you for the eighteen-year-old bass player in the noise punk band. You hate her face, the way her eyes scrunch up in defense from dawn. You love what she used to be, and what you used to be. She lights a joint, hits it, and you accept it.

“Have a good trip,” she says as she pulls up to the loading zone.

You take a step towards her, which makes her look away. When she looks your way again, you kiss her on the lips. They are cold and still.

“I love you,” you say.

“Take care of yourself,” she says and without another look she gets into the car and pulls out.

After you check in your bag, you look in your wallet. Two dollars. In searching for more cash you find a baggie that once held half a gram of cocaine. You head to the bathroom and, once there, lick it until your teeth feel vaguely numb. Bags hang your eyes. A patchy beard has sprouted on your chin. You still have a cut on your neck from when the mill worker put your head through the pawn shop window next to Al and Vic’s. You head to the bookstore and steal a Rolling Stone. On the plane, you start to read an article about Iris DeMent. She’s your mother’s favorite singer. Two lines in, you fall asleep. You’re out until Little Rock.

You spot your father standing by the gift shop. He’s giving his patented smile, not showing any teeth. With each step closer, his smile fades. By the time you’re shaking his hand, his brow is knit in a frown. He sticks a hundred dollar bill in your pocket.

“Good to see you, son.”

“You, too,” you say. You mean it. Walking to the baggage claim, he puts his arm around you, and you put your head on his shoulder. His arm stays on your shoulder as you go to the car. Stella is in it. Her face seems gray, but she’s wagging her tail the way she did the day Mom brought her home from the breeder’s ten years ago.

“Stella looks good,” you say.

“Her health’s not too hot,” he says, reaching over and scratching her ears. “We’re not sure how much longer she has.” You both sit in silence, and you can sense your father is working on the right way to go about saying something. He clears his throat.

“You drinking again?” Dad asks.

“A little,” you say. He pats you on the knee and Stella licks your face.

When you get to your parents’ house, you walk to the guest bedroom and lie down. It’s dark when you open your eyes again. There is a note hanging on the microwave written in your mother’s loving hand.

Went to a dinner party at the Finleys.
There’s salmon in the fridge.
Glad you’re home.

Love,
Mom

You ignore the salmon and look for wine, but there isn’t any. You fish your phone out of your back pocket. When you turn it on, you have twenty new voice mails. The first eighteen are from Theodore, and you delete them without listening.

Then there is Jared:

“Dude, twelve assholes just came to the house lookin’ for you! You stole money from them or something?” He sighs. “I don’t know, man, Sarah is freaked. Call me when you get this.”

The last one is from Emily:

“So, I turned your phone on. This is the last time. Hope you’re having fun. It was nice to see you.”

You call her back and it rings once and goes to voicemail. You don’t leave a message. You turn on the TV and turn it off immediately. You check your pants for another baggie. There isn’t one. You check the pants Emily packed. Nada. You check the bookshelf, where two summers before you stashed your weed. There is nothing to smoke and nothing to drink. You decide to take your father’s station wagon for a drive.

There are no stores in the gated village your parents retired early to. You drive ten miles to get out the gates. A man in a brown uniform gives you a salute as you pass. You suppress the urge to give him the finger. You pass two supermarkets and a few gas stations. Then you spot a liquor store. Your stomach feels queasy as you lay eyes on the endless ocean of bottles. You get Jack Daniels and smile at the clerk.

At your parents house you crack the bottle and get ready to chug. When you smell it, though, you get sick. Your hands shake. Your gorge rises. You cannot take a drink. You pour a shot, but cannot drink this either. You take the shot glass to the back door and throw it as hard as you can into the woods, and go back to TV.

When your parents get home you are still sober. You’ve hidden the liquor, but can’t stop thinking about it. Your mother rubs your beard and kisses the top of your head like she’s done since you can remember, then heads to the kitchen to heat the salmon. Her eyebrows are thinner, but her rosy cheeks are the same as when she used to pick you up from soccer practice. Her graying brown hair is cut the same way, too.

“Are you still working at the independent paper?” she asks.

“No.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Why not?”

“I missed an interview with Iris DeMent,” you say. The real reason was a woman accused you of being drunk during Family Day at the Clark Fork Park.

You’re sure Mom knows that’s a lie, but she doesn’t say so.

“Have you looked for another one yet?” she asks.

“No.”

Since the paper fired you two months ago, you worked as a sushi roller for three weeks and at Burlington Coat Factory for two. Without thinking about it, you go to the grandfather clock and pull out the whiskey bottle. You bring it to the sink, open the bottle, and pour it down the drain. Your mother silently watches.

“Have you been drinking again?” she asks.

“A little,” you reply.

The next night you allow your mother to drive you to a church. In the basement there is a cluster of smiling faces. The people shake your hand and tell you they’re glad you could make it. For an hour they drink coffee and talk about how they haven’t drunk booze in a while. You’ve been to places like this before, once when you were eighteen and once three years ago when you were twenty. After the hour you help stack chairs. A woman with white hair and yellow teeth rubs your back.

“Hope to see you again,” she says.

“I think you will,” you say.

A week later you still haven’t taken a drink. You’ve been going to those gatherings every day, back at that church a few times and in a trailer outside the village gates. You went to a gathering in an abandoned school house behind the horse track in a town twenty minutes away, too. You had Christmas with your family. Stella had to be put to sleep the day after. You dug a hole in the garden like your father asked and you held Mom’s hand as she cried. It was the first time since before high school you felt like a part of the family.

Jared continues to call, as does Theodore. You only pick up calls from Emily, and she’s called just twice.

On Sunday, you go for a walk with your father. It’s brisk outside, but it seems tropical compared to the cruel mornings of Montana. You walk by the golf course.

“Have you been looking for a new reporting job?” Dad asks.

“Not since I’ve been here, no,” you say.

“You can look for jobs online, you know, and you better be aggressive.  The newspaper industry is dying, so it’ll be hard to get another gig.”

“I know.”

In your head, you try to count the reasons for going back to Montana.  Emily is the only one you can think of.

“I may not go back, if that’s all right with you,” you say while walking up the driveway.

“Your mother and I would love that.”

Jared is rude when you tell him you’re not coming back.

“Rent is due in five days!” he shouts over the phone.

“I’m sorry. I’ll send you next month’s rent ASAP.”

“You still owe for this month.”

You hang up the phone. You write your dad an email, asking if you can borrow the money for rent.  In the morning, there is a blank check sitting on top of your wallet on the night stand.

Ten days into your new life, you get a job at a café. It’s in the golf course, and pays six dollars an hour, plus a cut of the tip jar. One woman works with you. She is a big, dark-haired woman named Cleo.

“Where you from, boo?” she asks on your first day. When you tell her, she makes a high pitched sound and pretends to shiver.  “Way too cold up there for me.”

“And you?” you ask.

“I’m from the mud of Louisiana, where it don’t dip below seventy in the middle of winter and races past a hundred in August,” she says.

The day after your first shift is New Year’s Eve. You talk to Dan, a friend from Montana.

“You’re missing the big bash at Al’s and Vic’s. It’s an eighties party. Should be pretty sweet,” he says.

It sucked last year,” you reply.

You want to go. Emily calls and wishes you a happy New Year. When you tell her you’re not coming back, she starts to cry.

“I’m gonna miss you,” she weeps, “I wish things hadn’t gotten so screwed up.”

This makes you want to drink more than anything. You go to the schoolhouse behind the track.  You don’t listen to what people are sharing.  Instead, you imagine yourself dressed up as Tom Cruise from Risky Business. You see yourself nodding at Jared, Theodore, and all the others that you usually had to duck away from. You see yourself handling your drinks like a gentleman, like a champion even. There would be no more fights. You wouldn’t puke on the pool table like at last New Year’s party. This time would be different, you say.

After the meeting there is a dance. A man with a very long soul patch backs his Honda hatchback up to the front door and cranks up his stereo. Guns N Roses are playing. Two women start dancing with each other. As you leave, you avoid the man in red extending for a handshake.

You’re going to get drunk, end of story. Your mind says to kill yourself instead, but that’s way too drastic. All the liquor stores look dark. The usually glowing martini glasses are silhouettes, only visible from the fluorescent glow of the beer coolers. You decide to hit the Wal-Mart by your parents’ house.

There is an agonizingly long line. You stand behind a man in a ball cap and listen to his side of a phone conversation.

“I got ’em, honey, don’t worry,” he says. You imagine he’s talking to his wife, probably some beer-chugging, NASCAR fan. Still, though, you feel envious.

“I know, I know, I can’t wait to see you too, baby. I love you.”

Darlene is the name of the woman at the register. She has a smiley face button on her apron, but isn’t smiling. Her neck hangs loosely like a hound dog.  When you put your beer down on the counter, she looks confused.

“You can’t buy this today, sir,” she says impatiently. Two women behind you in line stop their conversation about Allan Jackson.

“What? Why not?” Your voice is panicky.

She sighs. “It’s Sunday, sir.” The women behind are whispering now, and you can feel heat in your cheeks.

“Christ, what’s that supposed to mean?” you yell. The store goes silent. A man behind you somewhere clears his throat.

“Hey, take it easy, buddy,” he says. You ignore him and turn your attention back to a very nervous Darlene.

“It’s against the law to buy or sell alcohol in Arkansas on Sunday.”

Tears are rolling down your cheeks before you make it out the store. You punch the steering wheel of your father’s car. This isn’t fair, you think. Life drunk is miserable, and life without booze is hell. You think about last summer, when you and Emily saw The Decemberists at the Wilma. You drank like a gentleman that night, like a champion. When you interviewed the band for the paper, they laughed at all of your jokes and invited you to the after party. During their set, they dedicated a song to you. When you declined to go to the after party so you could walk Emily home, she told you she would love you forever.

Another memory comes to mind, this one not that long ago. It was just a week before you came to Arkansas. You stay up all night drinking, trying to figure out a way to pay the rent. Finally, you drive your car to Theodore’s, but you have to stop at a gas station and fill up your front tire. When you get to Theodore’s house, you make sure he’s at work. When this has been established, you kick in his back door. Under his mattress, you find twelve hundred in cash. Under his bed, you find half an ounce of weed. You look for cocaine, but find none. You sell the weed to a kid with a nose ring. You decide before you pay the rent, you’re going to celebrate. You call up Darnell, the third string fullback for the Montana Grizzlies and your second string coke hook up. He comes through, and two days later you’re broke without paying the rent.

Then, like a punch in the stomach you’re hit with a sane thought: I don’t want to drink, and I don’t want to die.

It strikes you as the first rational idea you’ve had in a long time. You drive back to your parent’s house.Your mother is asleep and leaning against your father. He is watching The Grand Ol’ Opry.

“How was the meeting?” he asks.

“Great,” you say.

The day you are supposed to head back to Montana, you are cleaning the fryer at the golf course. After you drain the machine, scrub the sides, and fill it with fresh oil, you take the old stuff to the receptacle behind the ninth hole. You take your phone out. The only person who has called you in the past two days is Theodore. You dump the grease. The sides of the container look like a thousand candles were melted in it. You drop your phone in.

Walking back through the course to the parking area, you pass a pond. Steam is rolling off it. The ground is wet, and two Canadian geese have their wings up. They’re honking and circling each other. It looks to you like some sort of dance, something ballerinas in New York would imitate. It’s beautiful.

~Justin Carroll