Peter DeMarco ~ It’s Not About Lions

The man sit­ting next to Henry wore an army fatigues jack­et and appeared to be in his late twen­ties. A pack of Marlboro sat on his desk. That was the thing about col­lege, Henry was learn­ing, you could have some­one any age in your class, even war vet­er­ans. At least there were no more high school bullies.

They sat in a small group dis­cussing the Ernest Hemingway short sto­ry about a wealthy man who goes hunt­ing and shows fear when a lion charges and at the end gains the courage to face anoth­er charg­ing lion, but is killed by his wife, who claims it was an accident.

I think the sto­ry is a metaphor for how to live your life, a girl in the group said.

I’ve seen life, the vet­er­an said, and lions don’t shoot back.

That’s why it’s a metaphor, she said. He’s using the lion to make a point about fear.

It’s not about lions, the vet­er­an said. He took a fold­ed news­pa­per arti­cle from his note­book that showed a pho­to of him hold­ing a rifle in what looked like a back­yard. He stood next to the kind of hole that a back­hoe would dig.

I con­tract­ed this com­pa­ny to dig a pool, he said. But there was a prob­lem with my gov­ern­ment checks and I couldn’t make a pay­ment so they stopped dig­ging. Every day I’d walk into the yard with my cof­fee and stare at that hole. I called them and said I’d get the mon­ey, but I guess they didn’t trust any­one who’d been in Vietnam.

Months lat­er the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny super­vi­sor showed up in his back­yard want­i­ng to get paid. The vet was hav­ing a bar­beque. You know what he does, the vet said, he takes a beer from the cool­er and says if he can’t get his mon­ey he might as well have a drink. I got my rifle and a shov­el. I told him to dig.

The vet­er­an was arrest­ed and charged with aggra­vat­ed assault, but the charge was even­tu­al­ly reduced and set­tled. The arti­cle was writ­ten up by the sub­ur­ban paper. He passed it around. His name was George.

I made that fuck­er dig, he said, in front of all my guests. There’s your metaphor.

The class was silent. Henry wasn’t sure he under­stood the point.

That’s my def­i­n­i­tion of what­ev­er you want to call it, George said. Forget about your lions. It’s about fam­i­ly and back­yard and hot dogs, it’s about fuck­ing pools.

The teacher thanked him for shar­ing his story.

After class they walked out into the square. Henry watched George light a cig­a­rette and sit on a stone wall. Henry won­dered how you could you sit in a class­room after being in war. He was just an ush­er at a movie the­ater, where he ripped tick­ets, swept up pop­corn, and found lost objects under seats on sticky floors. Where was the real life in that.

**

A week lat­er in a film class elec­tive Henry watched a for­eign film called The Bicycle Thief. It was made in Italy. Henry had nev­er seen a film with sub­ti­tles. The sto­ry was engag­ing. A father and son look­ing for the father’s stolen bicy­cle that he needs for work. But at the end the father steals some­one else’s bike and is chased, becom­ing no dif­fer­ent than the thief he orig­i­nal­ly pur­sued. A good man now sud­den­ly look­ing like a bad man.

The lights came up. Henry stared at the blank screen.

You alright, a voice said. Henry turned around. It was George.

Yeah, Henry said.

They left the the­ater and walked into the sun­light. Henry felt dis­ori­ent­ed after watch­ing a movie in a dark the­ater in the morning.

George offered him a cig­a­rette. Don’t smoke, Henry said.

You think I freaked peo­ple out the oth­er day, George asked.

Maybe, Henry said.

My wife almost left me after that, he said. She made me go into ther­a­py. What are you studying?

My father owns a hard­ware store, Henry said. Wants me to learn busi­ness so I can take over one day.

I want to make a movie. I’ve always liked cameras.

They walked to the cafe­te­ria and had cof­fee. Henry said the movie made him think about the time he got caught steal­ing. Records at a depart­ment store, he said. I had allowance mon­ey. I don’t know why I did it because I was raised to be good.

Maybe you were tired of being good all the time, George said.

Why do you think the father stole the bike?

He’s frus­trat­ed, can’t get his bike back, the bike he needs to sup­port his fam­i­ly, they’re poor, who knows, maybe it was a fuck you to the sys­tem. A sub­con­scious kind of thing.

George looked around. I didn’t even fin­ish high school, he said. After Vietnam, I real­ized they don’t teach you shit anyway.

They sat in silence. Then George asked for a ride home. My car’s in the shop, he said. My wife dropped me off.

Henry had seen doc­u­men­taries on Vietnam. Soldiers in ele­phant grass, the jun­gle, rivers, cov­ered in mud, sur­round­ed by deaf­en­ing explo­sions and gun­fire, and now here was a guy deal­ing with mun­dane things like get­ting his car repaired and a ride home from school.

The veteran’s house was a Cape Cod style. He point­ed to the street. Four white bases formed a dia­mond between the maple trees. I paint­ed those for the kids before I left for Vietnam, he said.

They sat in the den, com­plete with shag rug, stereo con­sole, cof­fee table, couch and fire­place. On the man­tle above the fire­place was a base­ball tro­phy and a row of framed fam­i­ly pic­tures. George lit a cig­a­rette and put a record on the turntable, a song about being in the desert on a horse with no name. He picked up a base­ball glove from the cof­fee table and sat back on a reclin­er. He pound­ed the glove. They didn’t talk for a lit­tle while. Then George said: I thought the song was about a guy on a horse, but in Vietnam some­one told me that horse was slang for hero­in and the song was about addic­tion. Yeah, nobody teach­es you shit.

He pound­ed the glove again.

Henry walked up to the man­tle. Next to the tro­phy were Little League pic­tures. There was also a movie cam­era. 16mm. Shaped like a square box. Bell and Howell. There were chinks in the metal.

I smug­gled that home from the war, George said. The cam­era­man was killed. The film is still in there.

Do you want to know what’s on it?

I know what’s on it, he said. He got up and took the cam­era off the shelf. He sat back down with it. He caressed the metal.

Real life, he said. That’s what’s on it. The shit they don’t teach you.

Do you think the film is still good?

Maybe, said George. A pho­to­jour­nal­ist had been film­ing him and a friend in a fox­hole, and the friend was in the mid­dle of telling the cam­era how he’d just gone to the prom and now he was being shot at and how fucked up that was and then a sniper blew his head off.

The cam­era­man was killed a few min­utes later.

George pound­ed the glove. Henry looked out the slid­ing glass door that led to the yard. He saw the giant hole, rec­tan­gu­lar in shape. He was sur­prised it was still there.

George joined Henry at the door. Nice pool, right, he said. There’s your fuck­ing sys­tem. He said his wife want­ed the hole filled in but he want­ed to keep it as a sym­bol to show how the sys­tem doesn’t help the reg­u­lar guy.

Or a metaphor, Henry said. George laughed. You know what’s crazy, he said, before the war I’d nev­er even had a fistfight.

You know what’s crazy, Henry said, I failed shop class and my father wants me to work in his hard­ware store. What kinds of genes did I pass on to you, he said, the son of a car­pen­ter and you fail shop. My moth­er said I had his­to­ry in my genes, that I came from civ­il war descen­dants, my great grand­fa­ther. Like that makes me some kind of superhero.

Doesn’t mat­ter if you’re relat­ed to fuck­ing Custer or Napoleon, George said, nobody can teach you how to face death.

Henry said he had to go help at the store. George thanked him for the ride and gave him his phone num­ber in case Henry ever want­ed to talk.

The nee­dle on the record play­er was stuck in a groove, repeat­ing the lyrics over and over but George didn’t seem to notice, he kept hit­ting the glove, soft, and then a lit­tle hard­er, method­i­cal, and Henry could still hear the sound as he left the house.

Henry’s father was out to lunch. He sort­ed nails and screws into lit­tle plas­tic box­es that resem­bled mini-coffins. A pic­ture of Jesus stared at him from the wall. It was half cov­ered by a stack of paper­work. After Henry’s moth­er died the church pas­tor stopped by the store and gave his father the pic­ture. He said Jesus was a car­pen­ter so it seemed appro­pri­ate to have him look­ing over his father’s store, the hearth of the com­mu­ni­ty. Jesus had his hand on the shoul­der of a suf­fer­ing man.

Henry sud­den­ly under­stood some­thing. Maybe his rea­son for steal­ing was a sub­con­scious one, too. A fuck you mes­sage to Jesus for fail­ing to save his moth­er. Who the hell was Jesus, any­way, there were no real pic­tures of him, he was just a plas­tic baby in a manger at Christmas, a ghost behind a rock, and the stuff they taught you in school was irrel­e­vant, like George said, noth­ing about real life, like the smell of waste in the hos­pi­tal room because your mother’s kid­neys had failed and how you were sup­posed to go back to school like noth­ing hap­pened and do make-up work and try to avoid the bul­ly who called you a fag­got and pum­meled your face for not let­ting him cheat off you, leav­ing your blood fos­silized in the cracked gran­ite crevices of the high school bathroom.

Henry took the pic­ture off the wall and ripped it up. He locked the store. He didn’t have his father’s pro­cliv­i­ty for build­ing or fix­ing things. He was done being guid­ed into things he didn’t believe in.

He drove to the the­ater, took out the lad­der, and put up the black tiles on the mar­quee for a new hor­ror movie. Halloween.

He called George from the owner’s office. He want­ed to tell him about his new insight. He let the phone ring for a long time before hang­ing up. Maybe George was pick­ing up his car at the shop or watch­ing the kids play in the street.

Or maybe he was stand­ing at the slid­ing glass door, pound­ing the glove, and still star­ing at the hole.

~

Peter DeMarco pub­lished a New York Times “Modern Love” essay about becom­ing a New York City high school English teacher and meet­ing his wife. Before teach­ing, Peter had a career in book pub­lish­ing, and spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time act­ing in region­al the­ater and attempt­ing to be fun­ny on the ama­teur stand-up com­e­dy cir­cuit in New York City. Other writ­ing cred­its include pieces in trampset, Maudlin House, New Flash Fiction Review, Monkeybicycle, Hippocampus, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver, Flash Fiction Magazine. Read more at: peterdemarcowriter.com