Chuck Strange ~ First Kicks the Bucket

All the Christmas lights around town were com­ing down, stars and trees and the blink­ing yel­low strings gone street by street and in the morn­ing I was leav­ing. We came in out of the cold blue and ordered beers and Katie told me what degloved meant in a hos­pi­tal set­ting, as it relates to a penis. It is exact­ly as it sounds. I knew all sorts of words and ideas back then that had noth­ing to do with my own life.

Sepsis is when a lit­tle old guy in the wel­fare apart­ments gets an infec­tion from lying down in his own filth and it poi­sons his blood. Endocarditis is when a young moth­er on hero­in uses bad nee­dles that make the tubes in her heart grow a cer­tain kind of fun­gus. Later I walked past the mount­ed elk in a san­ta hat to take a leak in the john and stud­ied a sort of green col­ored flo­ra climb­ing out under the uri­nal cake.

I was think­ing about boot camp, and feel­ing ner­vous about my age. Also about get­ting my head shaved. That would hap­pen the next morn­ing, when I got to San Antonio, Texas. I had a bus tick­et from Butte, Montana that left at 6 on the dot.

Katie had a PBR tall can that she slurped from and told me about her favorite patient from work that week, as she always does, even though our lives were going to be spin­ning out in dif­fer­ent direc­tions when I got on that bus after only one more sleep. It was a young guy who got shot in the back of his head by his own dad. He woke up with­out a sin­gle memory.

“We haven’t told him yet what hap­pened,” she said. “Poor guy. All he keeps say­ing is his head real­ly hurts.”

She had no sense that our lives were com­ing unglued. That wasn’t all her fault. I made the mis­take of telling her how the recruiter said I could get sta­tioned in Great Falls if I want­ed to, in a last-ditch hedg­ing against total­ly peel­ing away. She had it in her head that that’s how things would go.

I want­ed to know why the col­ored string of lights behind the bar looked cloud­ed when she said to me, “you’re get­ting lost in your own head again baby boy.” I smirked and kissed her cheek. It was late enough then that the bar­tender let us smoke. She pulled a Marlboro Red from her purse and tapped it on the bar.

I tried loud­ly say­ing some of the mil­i­tary words I knew because one of the oth­er guys at the bar had been a Marine. He was always in there on Sunday nights and though he usu­al­ly kept to him­self some­times liquor or a glare would send him off scream­ing about his sac­ri­fice for the coun­try. The bar­tender would have to smoth­er and shush him like a baby when it hap­pened. He was a tiny man whose eyes spasmed in con­stant tiny twitch­es. I rat­tled around words and phras­es like E‑4, ASVAB, MEPS, etc.

I could tell he was annoyed already. It wasn’t me. There was a chub­by guy cov­ered in hair telling every­one he could about ghosts in the old cop­per min­ing shafts. He had so much hair on his body it looked like he was wear­ing a gnarled old brown sweater under his T‑Shirt. He had just tak­en over the local haunt­ed his­tor­i­cal soci­ety after his grand­fa­ther died.

“What I do is right up there with the may­or, in terms of impor­tance,” I heard him say maybe six or eight times that night. He had a wealth of knowl­edge, he said, passed down in an ancient oral tra­di­tion that only he had the blood to take on. He said he had no sib­lings or cousins.

“Pay atten­tion … here,” he told my girl and me, point­ing to the mid­dle of his phone. It was a dark video with only the old tim­ber frames of the mine vis­i­ble. The spot where he point­ed got a lit­tle light for maybe a sec­ond. “There! You see it?”

“Ah yeah, I kin­da see it,” she told him.

The chub­by man stared at her a moment too long. Watery, hun­gry fat eyes. “Is she yours?” he asked me.

“She is,” I told him.

“Can I dance with her?”

I looked at her first. Here’s a woman whose whole life is bro­ken bod­ies, fail­ing organs, scream­ing fam­i­lies falling over and weep­ing in the wait­ing rooms. She only looked down at her legs and went a shade of maroon.

“Better not,” I said.

“Why not?”

But I didn’t know why not.

“I’m not sure.”

Whatever, he said. And walked away from the bar.

“I’m sor­ry about that,” I told her.

“It’s fine.”

“Maybe I should beat his ass.”

“Don’t.”

“Maybe after the ser­vice I’ll be tough.”

She gave my arm a squeeze. “You are tough.”

Those Sunday nights peo­ple ambled in and out of the bar like the few cold weath­er flies find­ing a way inside to rest in the win­dowsill before the big sleep. All night the chub­by hairy ghost guy had been try­ing to get his sto­ry out but had to tell it in pieces as the ears came and went.

“Did I tell you about the guy who got shot in the fore­head?” Katie asked me. The only sound going in the whole place was the clank­ing of pool balls.

“Yeah his dad shot him.”

“No no. Another guy. Tried to kill him­self but all he had was a rifle. Used his toe to pull the trig­ger. Blew his whole fore­head off.”

“Christ did I just hear that right?” the bar­tender said. “I did not expect to hear that tonight.”

“Right!” She was beam­ing then. Up out of her chair. Lit anoth­er smoke and the bar­tender slid her a new PBR.

“Post-frontal lobec­to­my,” she announced. “Walks and talks and eats, fine. But every once in a while he gets up in the mid­dle of the night and goes around smash­ing his head into car doors parked out in the street.”

“Oh OK I think I’ve heard of that guy,” the bar­tender said. “Got any oth­er good ones?”

“Oh she does,” I said. She socked my arm, play­ful like.

He laid his tow­el on the bar real neat and fold­ed and leaned over to hear her. Her eyes shone like they had pricks of sil­ver in them. She nev­er got too high or too low. She had her pur­pose. If things nev­er changed she’d get to the grave ful­ly at peace as long as she nev­er had to real­ly think about it.

She told the bar­tender every freck­le she’d seen on an arm in the ER over the years. She told him what a keloid scar was. He lis­tened to it all. My god, how she lit up when she had some ears right there in front of her, for her.

The chub­by ghost guy came back he leaned his weight on the bar and sort of wheezed like a pig. Stories of dis­mem­ber­ment and big long lac­er­a­tions were com­ing out my girl like a sieve. The bar­tender took it all in like a drink.

“I knew that fuckin guy,” the chub­by ghost man said. “I fixed him. Fixed him. Glue on the hole. Super glue that bitch. Hey Mike, give me a shot, and what­ev­er this cutie wants.”

The bar­tender pinched his lips in like a sullen dog, turned and got a bot­tle of whisky off the shelf and poured one, slid it across the bar. The ghost guy took the shot off the bar and slid it down his throat. His tongue came back out through his beard­ed face; the face of a sick cat maybe, and he shook his head so that his eyes went rat­tling around in the sock­et. Then his cheeks filled.

The Marine jumped up from his stool. “Don’t you fuckin puke on me,” he said.

He swal­lowed and held a fist to his mouth and shuf­fled across the floor to the men’s room. We all sat there a moment in our respec­tive silences. The bar­tender got him­self a beer and cracked it.

“Ah hell,” he said. “Didn’t real­ize how late it was. I got­ta close up.”

Katie said that was too bad. She said we were hav­ing fun.

“No no no. You all can stay. I just have to get the door locked.”

“Hey Mikey,” the Marine said, “That weird lady nev­er came tonight?”

“What? Oh no. Haven’t seen her.”

While the bar­tender pulled the strings on his lights and twist­ed shut his door, he and the Marine talked about the woman. She was small with some impair­ment that made her look like a child in the face, with thin­ning gray hairs cut short on her head and the wisps of a lady mus­tache uncar­ed for.

But I was only half lis­ten­ing. I was watch­ing my girl. She leaned up on the bar and held her­self under her breasts. Traces of flushed pink cheeks cur­tained by her long, wavy brown hair that I would some­times hold in my hands in the dark and then drop down her shoul­ders before trac­ing the ridges of her spine with my fingers.

I had heard all the sto­ries, all the foul­ing and rank smells of pro­laps­es and infect­ed sores erupt­ing. I knew how peo­ple shrieked when their ground down flesh from motor­cy­cle acci­dents got cleaned with a wire brush. If I were ever to get hurt in the ser­vice I could speak the nurse’s lan­guage. I think that would impress them.

And maybe I’d land a nurse again, a dif­fer­ent nurse, and I’d be right back to this life I had a pre-paid tick­et away from. And that nurse I would meet, I knew whether I ever came to her or not she would always be just as hap­py. She would have her sto­ries. She would meet some­one who want­ed to hear them. And the rest of their lives she would be there remind­ing him of dif­fer­ent pains and the odd way blood smells when there’s a lot of it. The strange things peo­ple do when part of their heads are miss­ing. It would nev­er have to be me, it would only have to be some­one, any­one, who could sit there and lis­ten until they grew old togeth­er. Then it would only be a mat­ter of who first kicks the bucket.

The chub­by man wad­dled back from the john, his gray shirt was stained with sweat under the armpits and caked with a sour smelling vom­it down the bel­ly of it.  “Mikey,” he said. “You got­ta clean the bathroom.”

“You puked in the toilet?”

“No the urinal.”

“You puked in the urinal?”

“No. I think some­one did though.”

“Oh fuck you Matt you got­ta clean it up.”

“That’s your job. You do it.”

The Marine sprang up and got the chub­by man in a head­lock. The puke from his shirt smeared all over the Marine’s leather jack­et sleeve and that made me gag. The bar­tender said “not in here, not in here” and waved his arms over his head the way they tell you to if you see a bear.

“Don’t kill him Donny,” the bar­tender yelled. But they had gone, those two, out the door and it swung shut behind them.

Katie start­ed to say some­thing about a vom­it­ing patient she had, but the bar­tender drowned her out. “Go make sure he doesn’t kill him,” he said to me.

I got out just in time to see the Marine hit the chub­by man with a straight hard hand to the nose, send­ing him to the con­crete. He had been yelling that it was a mis­take to hurt him, and then he was on the ground and the lit­tle Marine mount­ed him like an ape and began beat­ing his face. I grabbed his shoul­ders and pulled him off, and he turned around and drew his fist back. My eyes squeezed shut.

“Buy a charm?” I heard. It was the lit­tle woman they had been talk­ing about ear­li­er. She was right behind me there on the side­walk and her high-pitched voice made me jump.

In her hand were things made from plas­tic beads strung togeth­er. They were all cross­es, done in dif­fer­ent colors.

“Sure,” the Marine said. His fist was still cocked when he said it, then he felt for his wal­let. “Yeah hold on. $5 still?”

“More of em at the house,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” the Marine said. He hand­ed her a five. “I only want one tonight.”

“Your friends?”

“Yeah, yeah. They’ll each have one.”

I got my wal­let out of my pock­et. I pulled out a five and hand­ed it to her, and she gave me a lit­tle cross made from roy­al blue beads.

“Your friend?” she said, point­ing to the chub­by man, bleed­ing and com­ing in and out on the sidewalk.

“Yeah, he’ll have one too,” the Marine said. “Hey. Get out your wallet.”

He wig­gled his wal­let out from under him and fished.

“No mon­ey,” he said.

“I’ve got him,” I said. The Marine gave me a nod. I gave the woman anoth­er five. She gave me a cross, pur­ple and red beads this time. I tossed it to the chub­by guy and he held it up to the street­light to see it bet­ter, sniff­ing and wip­ing the blood already dry­ing into his lip.

“These are real­ly nice,” I said.

“One more?”

“Tomorrow,” I told her, and she wad­dled off down the street, hold­ing the rest of her pieces in one lit­tle hand, a fist of wadded up fives in the other.

The Marine told me if the cops came not to say any­thing. “You don’t know me,” he said, and then he took off at a full sprint up the road. I saw him under one street­light and then he was gone to the night. I didn’t know him, he had that right. I nev­er would.

When Katie came out she took my arm and we walked across town to our apart­ment hud­dled against each oth­er for the cold. The sky was black and there were what seemed like a bil­lion stars up there, and both of us inter­mit­tent­ly went from watch­ing our feet to watch­ing the sky with­out a men­tion between us of what was happening.

Then we got home and slept naked, tight against each oth­er like two worn stones in the bed of a fast, deep riv­er that no one will ever find.

~

Chuck Strange is a writer from rur­al Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife and daughter.