His Monster
by James Sheldon
“Knock, knock.” He sipped his beer.
“Who’s there?” In slow succession, everyone else sipped theirs.
“Fuck.”
“. . . Fuck who?”
“Fuck yoooouuuuu!” Everyone laughed. They had nothing better to do. Carl was the
fucked, Robert was the fucker and the three others were patient observers, as if
it were a whore-and-donkey show. The bar was musty, with enough customers to make
it noisy in the smoke-filled air.
Outside, the bar served as the western neighbor of a lake. A man and woman walking
along the shore could just barely see to the eastern side, brightly illuminated by
the sun that was not quite ready to set, while to the north and south, there was no
end in sight and it was easier and more romantic to think that the lake could never
end. They could walk past the bar, alone except for a road and a forest, and could
then follow the road as it swerved dangerously close to small five-foot cliffs
decorating the edge of the lake. Homes came later and a town came later, and so
did the northern coast of the lake, but since that was much too far to walk, the
lake went on forever and so did they.
Carl breathed the bar smoke. If he were five years younger, he would’ve wanted
to get away from his stupid fucking friends and their stupid fucking town, but he
wouldn’t have known where to go. If he were ten years younger, he would’ve been
giddy at the prospect of public underage drinking, but with a month to go until
he would’ve been of age, his excitement would’ve seemed pointless. As things were,
he was making the quiet, sad transition from being a drunk to being an alcoholic.
He had begun the habit of saying that he didn’t give a shit about things: the time
clock, a parking ticket, the presidential election, the choice between the bar in
town or the bar outside of town. The way he looked at everyone at the table, his
friends knew that Carl wanted them to know that he didn’t give a shit about Robert’s
dumbass joke. So they know that the joke had hurt him somehow. But they didn’t give
a shit either.
“You are such a fucking prick,” Joe said.” “You walked right into it. What kind of
idiot are you?”
“I wanted to see how it ended,” Carl answered.
“You know how all his jokes end. I can tell you one of Robert’s jokes.”
Joe started throwing crumpled napkins and debris in Robert’s direction. “Why
did the chicken cross the road?”
“Why?” Carl asked.
“ . . . You’re such a fucking prick,” Joe said. “To fuck your mother, that’s why.
That’s one of your fucking jokes, Bob.”
“That’s not how they go. My jokes don’t go like that. I’ll tell you how my jokes
go . . . They go like . . . they go like this. Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Why? Carl asked.
“You’re such a prick,” Joe said.
“To fuck your mother UP THE ASS!” Robert laughed and knocked over a beer bottle
in Carl’s direction. “That up-the-ass is very important. It’s nothing without the
up-the-ass. Ain’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Carl said. Joe threw a napkin at Carl, who didn’t bother to move.
The napkin fell on his lap and stayed there while the five of them continued for
a few more hours than they should’ve. The moon came out full, but without any
lights outside except for whatever was coming from the bar, the spring night was
left in a dull darkness that turned deep and real if you approached the shadow left
by a tree or a lightless building. The five men stumbled out into the darkness.
Robert laughed, Carl smirked and the three others grinned. Joe squinted into the
parking lot that had at one time been gravel but which had recently been paved for
no good reason. It smelled like unneeded money, and Joe skidded his foot along the
ground, trying to kick the stones that weren’t there.
“Where’s my car? Fuck, Will, who stole my car? Where’s my car?”
“It’s right over there,” Will said.
“Goddammit,” Joe said. “I hate this fucking parking lot. They keep on moving my car.”
“Who moves your car, Joe?” Carl asked.
“How the fuck should I know?”
Robert, still laughing, laughed louder and pushed Joe, who bumped into Pete, who
had decided that he had forgotten something in the bar and was going to go back so
he could look for it for a few hours. Because, however, Joe had slammed him into the
door and was still close against him, there was no good way to get into the entrance.
“Shit! Get off me Joe!”
“What are you Joe, a fag?”
“I am going to my car.”
“Get off me and get your car, Joe!”
“That is what I am going to do.”
“You going back in, Pete?”
“Yes, I’m going back in. I’m sick of you people.”
“How’re you gonna get home?”
“I’m gonna shit in the woods.”
“I’m gonna go home, Pete,” Robert said, as elegantly as he could manage.
“Carl, would you like a ride with me or Joe?”
“I don’t care, I’ll go with Joe.”
“Will, you’re with me. Unless you prefer Joe.”
“I don’t care.”
“Nobody caaaares,” Robert yelled magnificently. “We may as well kill ourselves
right now.” Joe and Carl stumbled to one car, Robert and Will to the other. The
cars were old enough so that their makes and models didn’t matter so much. The
tires rolled along the pavement until they crunched onto the dirt road leading
from the bar, and then they were off north. It would’ve been more dangerous to
drive as drunk as they were if they hadn’t done it a thousand times before. It
was safer for them to drive than to walk, because if any one of them had walked,
he would’ve gotten lost in the slowness and unfamiliarity and then run the risk
of tripping into the lake or getting hit by a car. When driving, it was as if the
cars were on rails, so that as the rail-less road approached the edge of the lake,
swerving back and forth to tempt the crazy and the lonely, the two cars swerved
with it, effortlessly and perfectly, the same as they had always done and probably
would always do.
Joe’s car headed closer to the heart of the town as Robert’s veered off to a little
division of homes where Will lived. Carl was dropped off in front of a T-shirt
store on the interstate, where a few businesses catered to the handful of tourists
who liked the town either because it seemed quaint to them or because they had
relatives in the area and needed a place to stay. Carl walked through a gangway
to a wooden staircase in back, climbing above the store and opening the unlocked
door to his apartment. In the drunken darkness he could hardly see where he lived,
but he preferred it that way, and when he lay down on his bed to find that Jenny
wasn’t there, he seemed to prefer that as well. They had an agreement.
He woke up four hours later to the buzzing of his alarm clock. He didn’t remember
having turned it on, but he didn’t remember a lot of things. No one else was there,
and the bathroom was damp and used. Before taking a shower, he smelled the air for
signs of Jenny, and after the shower, he realized that her scent had been washed
away. She’d be back. Carl put on his ratty jumpsuit and left for work.
There wasn’t any car outside, so he started walking. The air was cold and dim.
It made Carl happy, or at least energetic, because he would never have been able
to wake up in warm weather. Rain clouds blocked the sun, a stiff breeze cut through
his clothes and it spurred Carl on as he walked through alleys and undeveloped
property on his way to work. He would love the summer when it came, but he knew
it would be bad for him. The summer would give him no reason to walk in the mornings.
“Jesus, Carl, you don’t look so good,” someone said outside the factory. Carl
should’ve recognized him, and maybe the face was familiar, but the name was miles
away. He wore a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the top, which seemed to be missing
a suit jacket. It seemed too early for this sort of man to be working here.
“Late night.”
“Oh.”
They walked through the designated back door and turned right into a blank hallway,
where the time clock waited alone in a corner. It looked like an old punch-clock
should have been there, with little cards for all the workers, but even though [. . .]
Carl snapped out of it and looked around to see someone, maybe the same [. . .]
[. . .]
going?”
“Out to the bar.”
She breathed in and out. “See you soon.”
He walked out and went down the stairs, only to turn around and go back up. “I need to make a phone call,” he said.
“You need a cell phone,” she answered. Carl didn’t say anything as he picked up the
phone and dialed one number before changing his mind and hanging up the phone. He
dialed another number, or maybe the same number, and then had the patience to see
it through.
“Joe? Hello? Joe? Are we meeting again tonight?”
“Sure, I think we are.”
“Could you pick me up?”
“Sure.”
“See you soon.”
“Yeah.”
As Carl hung up, Jenny walked out the door. “I’m going out.”
“See you soon.”
He sat on the sidewalk and watched the cars go by, picking up his head to see if
one of them would be the one he wanted. The owner of the store tried to shoo him
away.
“I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Do you have to stay out here? I don’t get enough business as it is.”
“Oh . . .” It took him awhile to say it. “Maybe you came to the wrong town.”
The man went back inside the store to wait for customers, mumbling something about
not causing any trouble.
Joe picked him up and they went to the bar. And Robert was there and Will and
Pete. Pete talked about shitting in the woods and no one wanted to believe him.
“I wouldn’t tell you if it weren’t the truth.”
“That’s what we’re afraid of, Pete,” Robert said. “We’re afraid you’re telling
the truth, and I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m a little scared that
you might be proud of yourself.”
While Pete went on to explain the intricacies of shitting in complete darkness,
Carl drank and worked up the nerve to say something that he had wanted to say.
“I have a joke,” he finally said. No one replied, but they stopped talking.
“Knock, knock.” He sipped his beer.
“Who’s there?” Robert asked. Everyone else sipped theirs.
“Fuck.”
“ . . . Fuck who?”
“Fuck yoooouuuuu – up the ass!”
“Carl,” Robert said, “you need to learn how to tell a joke.”
The moon, over the course of the next month, waned and [. . .] night.
The five of them sat at a table just to the right of where they usually did. The
other one was taken.
“To Carl!” Robert yelled. [. . .] Carl fucking say something!”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t deserve it.”
“. . . that’s why I’m thanking you.”
Robert got up for a round of drinks. Pete followed him to the old man behind the bar
whom everyone assumed was the owner. They talked to him like he was the owner.
“How’s business?”
And he always answered back like he was the owner.
“Not bad . . . Could be better.”
Nobody knew and nobody cared.
“Could I get five more?”
“Sure thing.”
He tottered around in the area of the tap and five more beers came back. The man
took his time to get the drinks. Whenever someone tried to rush him, he always
said, “I’m old,” but he only seemed to be old with the people who wanted to drink
too fast. Robert had learned a long time ago never to rush him. They might’ve
asked the waitress, but she never stayed as long as they did, and she didn’t like
them anyway. They got along well enough imagining what she looked like.
At first Carl was happy because he wouldn’t have to work tomorrow. Then he was
happy because he couldn’t remember if he had to work tomorrow and was giddy at
the prospect of being fired for his poor memory. When Robert ordered another
round, Carl announced with a snort that he didn’t remember what round this was,
and then he was happy that he wasn’t paying for anything. He always hated chipping
in for his friends on their birthdays, so he wanted to take advantage of his
chance to make them pay. “I wouldn’t mind another, Robert.” Robert hadn’t even
asked a thing. All he’d done was stand up, maybe to go the bathroom. “What’s that
noise?”
“What?”
“That howling. Something outside.”
“What?”
“ . . . I’d very much like another.”
“. . . Sure, Carl. Who else wants another?” After a series of I’m-Fines and
No-Thanks, Robert went to the bathroom, walked to the bar, and brought back a
single bottle, placing it delicately in front of Carl. “There you go, sir.”
“Thank you,” Carl said. “I’ll finish this one first.”
The beers ran down and the time ran down. Carl decided to oblige everyone
by going to the bar and paying for the last five beers. “It’s about that time,”
he said to the barkeeper, smiling sheepishly for lack of anything better to do.
“It is time,” the barkeeper responded.
“We’ll make it fast.”
The five of them raced each other with the last beer and headed out in a dazed
rush to the parking lot. “Stop screaming at me, Pete.”
“I ain’t screaming at no one.”
“You coming with us, Pete?”
“Yeah I’m coming with you . . . I’m cold. Can you find your car, Joe?”
“Fuck you, Pete. You’ve been giving me shit about that for a month now. You’re
going with Bob.”
“May I go with you, Robert?”
“Sure you can.”
“Can you find your car, Robert?”
“Of course I can. How about you, Joe?”
“Fuck you, Robert.”
“Thank you, Joseph, it makes me feel loved. Would anyone else want a ride with me?”
“I’m going with Joe,” Carl said and Will agreed.
“You’re just trying to make me feel bad,” Robert said. “Cmon, Pete, I’ll treat you
right.” They went to their separate cars, Joe Carl Will in one and Pete Robert
in the other. They took off down the road. The night was
no darker than usual, but it was dark. The road didn’t swerve any more than it
usually did, but it swerved, and Carl stared out the window as they neared the
point where the road veered close to the lake. Robert’s car traveled up front,
Joe’s car followed behind just enough to see the glowing taillights. Carl,
in Joe’s backseat, felt drowsy and leaned his head against the car window only
to find that the window had been rolled down because of the hot summer night. His
head fell outside the car and for a moment he felt a rushing smell of water and
dead fish. He watched the road curve as Joe’s car made a sharp left turn, and the
ridge and the water ran underneath him. Turning his head, Carl watched Robert’s
car as it followed the same inevitable path, moving just when it needed to avoid
the bumps, adjusting to the road by memory, wedged into the ruts it had spent its
whole life making. Carl closed his eyes and felt the wind blow his hair back.
A metallic thump somewhere ahead of him jerked him into opening his eyes. The back
of Robert’s car had suddenly come off balance. It made a swift right turn and leapt
off the ridge into the lake. Someone yelled something about shit, and just before
the car went down, its headlights illuminated rising serpentine neck of some enormous
creature. Carl barely saw it, but he had the best look of the three in Joe’s car
at the neck and the head as it reared back from what must have been a magnificent
thrust into the right rear tire of Robert’s car. Once all the lights brushed it by,
it descended into the shadows and maybe into the water, but Joe’s car made a swift,
instinctive left turn off the road and into a tree. Luckily, Joe slowed the car just
enough so that what might have been a crash only wound up as a bump. Since Carl’s
head was still out the window, if the car had been going much faster, he would have
lost or broken his neck, but as things were, he was left holding his neck and
yelling, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” as he opened the door, fell on the ground, and lay
perfectly flat to make sure his spine was in alignment.
“Jesus Christ!” Joe yelled as he ran out of the car. “What happened?” He slowed
down to a walk as he approached the ridge, then he looked for a sign of the car
and dove straight into the water without being able to see a thing. There was
another metallic thump as Joe hit the roof of the car, which hadn’t been in the
water long enough to sink very far. In confusion and pain, Joe sloshed off the roof
of the car into the water, realized he couldn’t swim drunk at night with all his
clothes on and cried for help at the top of his lungs.
“Ohhhhh fuck,” Carl mumbled as he got to his feet and ran to the ridge. He didn’t
see what he could do and was afraid to go into the water, so he teared up as he
ran over to Will, who had gotten out of Joe’s car and was now vomiting on a tree.
“Will, we have to help them, something’s gotten them.” He dragged Will over to
the ridge and they looked down as the fading rear lights of Robert’s car
flickered out and left them unable to see anything except a faint outline of
nothing illuminated by the moonlight and the distant light of Joe’s car.
“Help!” Joe yelled.
“Where are you?”
“Help!” Joe yelled one last time and then went under.
“What should we do?” Will asked.
“Something’s in the water.”
“They’re in the water.”
“Can’t you see it? It bumped into the car.”
“I can’t hear them.”
“Do you hear something?”
“They’re dead.”
“ . . . What should we do?” Carl asked.
“I could call the cops.”
“From where?”
“I have a cell phone.”
“Can you get a signal out here?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat on the ridge and stared ten feet ahead of them, where nothing could be
seen but a blank space where people were dying or dead. Will’s phone lit up his
face as Carl listened to the silence that overwhelmed him after the splashing and
bubbling was swallowed up the lake. The water lapped up against the vertical shore,
and maybe something moved where Carl couldn’t see and could only barely hear, but
Will was talking now – frantically about some accident out on the road that leads
to the bar, Tim’s bar, I don’t know what the name is, damn it, it’s the bar outside
town, Taylor, Taylor’s the name of the town, can’t you send someone, I don’t know
I can’t see I think they’re all dead I don’t know yes I’ve been drinking I told you
about the bar no I wasn’t driving the drivers are all dead god fucking damn it I
told you I wasn’t driving – and he threw the cell phone into the water, where it
landed with a dull splash. The rear light of Joe’s car left a light red shade on
both of them, but they couldn’t see anything because both their eyes were closed.
It took forever for the police car to roll up the road, but it was as if the police
had woken them up from the dream, and the forever they had spent staring into
dead space had suddenly become no time at all. The two of them stood up to say
whatever they could remember at the moment, but the cop shone his light over the
ridge and saw Joe’s body floating at the top. “Jesus, I just thought you were
drunk.” He ran back to the car and radioed for some help. “What happened?”
“Something got them,” Carl said.
Will stepped forward. “There were two cars . . . we were in the car behind . . .”
“Were either of you driving?”
“No, we were passengers in the back car.”
“Continue.”
“The car ahead of us swerved off the road into the lake and Joe jumped in after it.”
“Who’s Joe?”
“He was driving the car we were in.”
“Why didn’t you jump in?”
“We couldn’t see.”
“ . . . I’m going to take you in to the station.” The two blindly followed the
officer into his car, and as the car turned around and headed carefully down the
dirt road, the officer slowly complained that people have been asking for years
to put railing on this road. “It’s just too dangerous. Especially . . .
late at night. I hate it when this happens.” A number of lights in the distance
grew closer until they became a variety of emergency vehicles heading to the
scene of the accident. The sight of all this action brought Carl back to his
original point.
“Something got them . . . I saw the motherfucker, it had a long neck and a head
and it smashed into the back of Robert’s car. It was some sort of fucking monster.
And it looked at me and then . . . and then it went away . . . Jesus fucking
Christ I saw the thing.”
“Carl, shut up.”
“I saw it, Jesus fucking Christ, I saw it.”
“Just . . . Carl . . .”
The officer didn’t say anything as they headed to town, and the two others quieted
down until the station came up around a corner. They were ushered in, asked
questions, made to fill out forms. Will told his story. Carl told his. After a
few hours, Will was sent home. He called for a taxi and left. Carl was put in the
drunk-tank for the night. He didn’t care anymore if he had to go to work the
next day.
[. . .] saw something,” he said to the other guard in the morning.
“They all do,” the other one replied. Carl spent most of his time staring at the
wall and repeating the events constantly until his memory became a dream and the
dream became a series of variations. A neck and a head. Sometimes it was fast
and disappeared quickly. Sometimes it was slow and lingered to watch in idle
curiosity. One time it flew out of the water, snatched at a tire, nearly dragged
the car in, but then waited for the car to fall into the water of its own will.
Then it either vanished into the middle of the lake or took one of Carl’s friends
with it to do unspeakable things. Then it wasn’t there anymore. It had only been
a blur in the darkness, a smear of light caused by Carl turning his head to see
why the car ahead was moving so strangely . . . Robert was a fucking drunk.
But he wanted to believe what might or might not have been. Otherwise what happened
made no sense. If Robert could’ve made a mistake on a road he knew better than himself,
everything was up for grabs.
The replacement guard let Carl out [. . .] drunken embarrassment, [. . .]
[. . .]
As Carl walked out, having signed some things and received some things,
a man hustled into the police station. The only word Carl could hear before
the front door closed was “another,” but before he could get far enough down
the street to convince himself that none of his friends had ever existed, the
station door opened and the man came running out. Carl made a point not to look,
but he could imagine the man stopping on the doorstep and looking back and forth
along the sidewalk. He could hear the footsteps running up behind him and was
forced to slow down when the voice piped: “Carl?”
“. . .”
“I’m sorry. Excuse me. Mr. Volkman. Carl. Carl Volkman?”
[. . .]
“This isn’t Gilman.”
“. . . We like to cover a lot of ground . . .”
[. . .]
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
“What?”
“I got a headache.”
“Oh . . . what happened?”
“I was drunk.”
“But how did the crash happen?”
“I wasn’t driving . . . I don’t know.”
[. . .]
The reporter [. . .]
He called to see if he had to go to work that day [. . .]
[. . .]
Jenny was sitting on the couch. It was the first time he had seen her since Friday.
She’d heard about what happened, because Carl didn’t have a cell [. . .]
machines in the apartment so everyone was calling Jenny’s cell phone asking if
Carl was okay because they’d heard about what had happened, Robert’s wife called,
the wake is tomorrow and the funeral is Wednesday. Joe’s parents called, the wake
is on Wednesday and the funeral the day after that. Pete’s sister called, the wake
is on Thursday, funeral’s Friday, your parents called [. . .]
Your parents called, have you talked to them . . .
Jesus, why didn’t you tell me anything, I’m your girlfriend at least why didn’t
you tell me anything, my cell phone’s always on, not like the one you don’t have
or the one you don’t borrow from your friends . . .
[. . .]
“What’s going on Carl? I was looking for you, I thought, Jesus fucking Christ . . .”
Carl hugged her and spent the night with her. When he woke up the next morning, he
went to work on time and came back to find that she was gone. It gave him time to
get ready for the wake, but he never really had to plan ahead because random
co-workers or distant friends offered to give him rides out of pity. Robert’s was
crowded with polite, affable people who made sly comments about how the flowers
were arranged, the rumors surrounding the crash, the lack of people if you’d
thought about how many could’ve come, where Will had gone to, the closed casket,
and what could be underneath . . . Carl went home and fell asleep alone, when he
woke up he called work to say he wouldn’t be in for the next three days, he left
a message on someone’s voice mail. Robert’s funeral had fewer people than the
wake, and Joe’s wake had about as many people as Robert’s funeral, but the
silence of the people who were there made up for the silence of the people who
weren’t. There was an open casket with a calm, modified, slightly bloated
corpse in the middle of it. This was going by too quickly. Everyone at the wake
was at the funeral, but no one showed up to Pete’s wake except for Pete’s parents,
Carl’s parents and Carl. It made for an uncomfortable wake. They’d never found
Pete’s body, so instead of a casket they put up an empty bottle which looked
like an urn and a picture of him at his high school prom – it must have been
the best they could find on short notice. Carl’s parents said they had heard
about the wreck in the paper and had tried to call Jenny but she wasn’t doing
well how was she doing could be better but we’re doing fine and how are you doing
it could be better but I’m doing fine. They laughed and fidgeted for a few minutes,
then the parents gave him a newspaper clipping and left. At the funeral it was
only Pete’s parents and Carl himself. As the urn was lowered into a grave that was too
deep for it – that was how the parents wanted it, their son would be buried – Carl
told himself that they’d find the body eventually. A boater would find a bloated,
wind-blown corpse in the middle of the lake, or twenty years from now a diver would
scoop out a skull from the bottom of the lake, or maybe they’d find it in
something’s belly. It was hot outside, especially in an old suit.
Since the funeral was in the morning, he went to work in the afternoon and a few
of his bosses told him that they were sorry for his loss and that someone should
do something about that road. They came up to him one at a time over the course
of the few hours he was working, telling him it was a great loss, almost everyone
knew someone who knew someone who had died. They told Carl he was a great member
of the team, as if he were the one who had died and were impossible to replace.
Carl reassured himself by saying it would all be over by next week. He did his
job with less enthusiasm, knowing that no one would mind.
Coming home to an empty apartment, he tried to call Will so he could get a ride [. . .]
[. . .]
It was a long way to the bar. Even on a bike. Since he usually got a ride, it took him some time
to remember how to get there, but all he really had to do was take the main road
east out of town, past the railroad tracks that made a convenient border. A mile
past that was a bridge across a narrow portion of the lake, but just before he got
to the bridge, he made a right turn up the dirt road that rolled along the
edge of the lake.
The air was humid and smelled like dead fish. Now and then a car came by, kicking
up dust in his face. Approaching the series of turns next to the lake, Carl saw
in the grass Joe’s tire tracks and those of something larger, maybe a tow-truck.
As he turned his head to the right so he could see the tracks, the bike veered
away from the lake and stumbled off the road. He was tempted to make a sharp left
turn and plunge into the water just for kicks, but his clothes would’ve gotten wet,
he would’ve lost the bike, and there’d have been no good way for him to get either
home or to the bar once he clambered back on shore. So he went on.
Pulling up to the bar, he regretted not having anything to lock up the bike with,
but when he looked around and realized that the most likely suspect to steal
his bike would be a stray dog, he stopped thinking about it. The bar was musty
as usual, and when the bartender saw him, he made a special point of being friendly.
“Do you have any money?” he said and smiled.
“Sure I do,” Carl said, then opened his wallet for fun. “Wait, let me check.”
There was a twenty dollar bill in it and a piece of paper. If he drank fast
enough it would do, but he then made the mistake of looking at the piece of paper.
THREE DEAD IN MYS[. . .]
[. . .]
wasn’t feeling it nearly enough by the time that he ran out of money, so he sat
there, told the bartender to stop it and pulled out his twenty. The old man took
the bill and brought out one more beer. Carl, as he finished it, realized he had
been using the article as his beer coaster. The cut-out piece of paper had a
damp ring in its center, highlighting some words and erasing others. Carl read
it one more time, and as he read one more story of general tragedy, mystery and
public negligence, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with him.
“How are you getting home?” the bartender asked.
“I have a bike.”
“It’s getting dark out, you won’t see.”
“Will you drive me home?” Carl tried to say it sarcastically, but only barely
succeeded.
“Hell no . . . I’ll get you a flashlight.”
“What the hell am I going to do with a flashlight?”
“I don’t care, shove it up your ass so that the cars behind you
don’t run you over.”
“I don’t want your flashlight.” Carl stood up to walk out the door, but
the old man managed to catch him before he got out.
“Just don’t fall in the fucking lake.” Carl smiled as he put the small
flashlight in his back pocket.
As he got outside, he realized it was dark, and he also realized that his
flashlight would probably fall out if he tried to keep it in his back pocket,
so he held it in his right hand as he tried to steer the bike with his left.
There weren’t any cars anymore, but the clumsy motion of the bike, the
unfamiliarity, the handful of beers, and the swish of his tiny light over
the road made him dizzy and frightened. Soon enough he lost his balance and
the bike toppled over with him on top of it. His ribs hit the handlebar on
the way down, leaving him on the side of the road struggling for air and
clutching his side.
“Fucking flashlight.”
He crawled around to keep himself from vomiting, or maybe he tried to find
a better place to vomit. The smell of dead fish struck him and his arms
slipped over the edge of one of the cliffs along the edge of the lake. He was
able to stop himself from going completely over, the thought of falling over
was a little too much, but he couldn’t really get back up again. Either the
pain of the fall had disoriented him, or he was absorbed with the idea that he
might be on the exact same turn that he’d been on a week ago. He crawled around
until he found the flashlight, then he managed to stand up and drag the bike to
the side of the road, just in case. Sitting down on the cliff, he let his feet
hang down, not very far above the water. In a final gesture, he took out the article
and read it one more time with the flashlight. There was nothing to read, the words
didn’t mean anything anymore, but they were something to read. It was important to
read them, even if they were meaningless, and reading them here was especially
important, as if he were sacrificing those words and himself to the place,
the people, and the thing.
When he turned off the flashlight, he stared into the distance and debated
whether or not he should go back home.
Jenny asked him why he was doing this.
“I just . . .” Carl stumbled. He didn’t really want to explain himself, and even
if he did, he couldn’t think of a way to do it. “I just want to move.”
“Did you honestly think I’d want to move out there with you?”
“Not really, no.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I didn’t really think – I didn’t think you’d want to see me at all.”
“But . . . why are you being such a fucking idiot? How did you get that shack
anyway?”
“It was Pete’s. No one –”
“You already told me that. Wasn’t that supposed to be our money?”
“It wasn’t that much. His parents –”
“But that’s supposed to be our money!”
“. . .”
“Right?”
“You never said anything about that before.”
“But this is about us!”
“Us?”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“. . .”
“It’s just the fucking shack he passed out in when he was too drunk to see
straight.”
“. . .”
“It’s probably got his piss all over it.”
“. . .”
“So that’s it, then . . . you’re there, I’m here.”
“I guess.”
“Oh what the fuck.” And she left, slamming the door behind her before she opened
it again and asked, “What am I supposed to do about the rent?”
“If you need any help . . . I can help . . .”
“Fuck you.” She slammed the door again, leaving him in the apartment he no
longer rented with a duffle bag full of clothes and a lot of stuff he didn’t want
to take with him. It wouldn’t be long before his parents found out, Jenny might
be on her way to tell them now, he didn’t want to deal with them, he wanted to
leave. He left his key on the table, opened the door, locked up as much as he
could, stepped outside and closed the door, leaving him no options but going
away or sitting on the stairs until Jenny came back. He double-checked the bag as
he walked down the stairs only to realize that he hadn’t brought his shaver, but
he told himself he would buy a new one – or maybe he’d grow a beard, or whatever
kind of hair would show up on his face if he stopped shaving.
He got the bike from under the stairs. Ever since the owner had leant it to
him, Carl treated it like his own. The owner never bothered asking about it.
When he had told the owner he was moving out closer to the lake, that Jenny
would probably stay, the owner seemed just fine with everything. He asked if
Carl needed any help, and Carl just said, “Naah . . . I’ll just take some stuff
up . . . on the bike,” and waited for the owner to say nothing. But the owner acted
as if nothing had been said, telling Carl to call if he needed anything. So
Carl rolled away with the duffel bag thrown clumsily over one shoulder. As
he looked back at the T-shirt store, he thought he saw a strange shirt in the
window, with some green thing emerging out of water, but his looking caused
the bag to fall off his shoulder and forced him to slow down as he readjusted
the bag so that it would lay on his back instead of hanging from the pit of his
elbow. He headed east and turned up the road to the bar, but instead of going
all the way there, he passed up the portion where the road came close to the
lake and turned onto a narrow trail that headed into a small area of thick
trees. A single power line hung from its pole on the road and crossed through
the trees until it hit the small shack that Pete had never told anyone about.
It had its own septic tank and gas tank and that electric line and connection
to a local water supply, but it looked enough like a shack and was far enough
in the middle of nowhere to keep people away from it. Carl had seen it once
before, and he didn’t quite know why he was there.
It took him some time to get settled. His parents came over, and even though they
seemed to have had the intention of talking him out of this, they wound up
engaging in small talk. Carl showed his father the gas tank and got advice on
proper maintenance and tips on how to make the place look like somewhere he might
want to live. The pride of the tour was a little pier out on the shore.
The house wasn’t really near the shore, and the pier might not even have been
part of the property, but nobody ever used it and Carl took it as his own. All he
needed now was a boat, but, as he told his father, he was saving his money –
meaning that he didn’t have any money left to spend. The parents left Carl with
the house, which was furnished with whatever Pete had left behind: a stove
that did the job well enough, a heating system which would make the stove the
chief source of warmth once the winter came around, a dirty mattress on a
serviceable frame, a small cabinet for clothes, Pete’s empty liquor bottles,
a couch, and a television that didn’t work. Carl didn’t bother cleaning much
at first. He took the bike back and forth from work, where people began to
look at him funny, but he made a point of doing his job better than before,
to make up for whatever people thought of him. By the time he got home,
he was tired, and even though the closest place to eat was the bar, he didn’t
want to go to the bar. At first it meant that he didn’t eat very much, but
after awhile he began buying basic things from the grocery store and cooking
simple meals at home. He got things in order, even though the place didn’t
look too good. Jenny didn’t show up, and his parents didn’t show up, and
Will was long gone, and nobody showed up anymore. It suited him, at least for now.
He enjoyed standing on the edge of the pier and looking off into nothing. He
wasn’t too sure he actually wanted a boat. He liked staring at the edges of the
water and the land. Boats came by every now and then. Some of them were fishing
boats, but when it got cold, the boats stopped coming altogether, except for
strange ones with too many people on them who didn’t look like they were fishing,
only looking. He didn’t do much any more, and could only pray he’d keep his
job so he wouldn’t have to find another, but all the biking kept him strong,
he didn’t want to sleep so much anymore, his head was clear, and all his focus
was on the lake. He looked into it as if he were asking it something, or looking
for something, or expecting something from it. He waited for the lake to answer
some question which he had only the dimmest idea of asking.
[. . .]veered dangerously close to winter, Carl worked on his roof. He’d had to buy
a ladder from the hardware store and then attempt to take it with him on his bike
on a bumpy road while wearing a coat. Despite falling down twice and stopping a
number of times, he did a marvelous job of keeping his balance by holding the
ladder in his right hand as best he could and leaning left. Once he had leaned so far
he nearly went into the lake, but a newly installed rail just barely saved him.
The bike bounced off, he dropped the ladder to keep from toppling over and
skidded to a halt. By the time he got the ladder back to his home, he climbed up
to the roof and realized he was too tired to do much else besides look around, but
as he began absent-mindedly picking leaves out of the gutters, an SUV pulled up
clumsily to the house. He was stepping down the ladder when a voice asked:
“Are you Carl Volkman?”
[. . .]
there and look at the lake.”
“Okay.” Matt ran off the pier and ordered the two others to step back a little, so
that Carl would be little more than a shadow in the distance, set against the
expanse of a vast blue nothing. They made it seem as if he were searching for
something or standing in wait. Carl was waiting for them to go away. He enjoyed
the relative silence and listened to the lap of the water against the beams of
the pier. It felt as if there were two different worlds. On the ground, the
three filmmakers had their angles and images, and on the pier, this little
outpost in the water, Carl had his own. There was no intermingling of the two,
but so long as the water of this lake was close, there was an extra person walking
alongside him, neither man nor woman, wrapped in the dull brown opaqueness of
the lake’s surface when it got close to land.
“Okay! Done! Cut! Thanks a lot, Carl, could you just sign here.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks a lot. We’ll let you know when everything’s finished.”
“I’m sure you will.” They packed up their things and left. Carl was glad.
He was tired and needed to go to bed. But first he needed to put away the ladder.
Most of his free time was devoted to the crows who watched him from his roof and
the branches of his trees. At first he felt sorry for them. The cold lake wind
made him shrink inside his jacket, and he looked and saw the crows shrinking
into themselves. He started leaving pieces of bread outside, and then leftovers.
As he started learning more about how to cook, he left out the elaborate remains
of his meals. The crows picked the meat off the bones and then they would carry
the bones away. One weekend, he spent more time than he wanted staring out the
window at a pork chop bone he had left out that morning. Having botched his attempt
to fry it, he left it out there with quite a bit of meat left on and watched
in astonishment as three crows swept down to inspect. They started by mutually
pecking at it, but then began fighting until one lifted it up with a great effort
and attempted to fly off, the other two in hot pursuit. Since the thief couldn’t
go quite as fast as the other two, Carl saw two quick blurs flying quickly back
and forth across a very slow bird until finally the bone fell. By now there was
no going back. There was no point in sharing anymore. The three birds
continually fought over the bone for about half of an hour. Whenever one picked
it up, the other two would knock it down. They eventually became so tired that
they didn’t care anymore. They sat around the bone, numb, just staring at it.
Eventually they got back to picking at it again, but then a fox chased them
away and was able to have his dinner by himself. The fox would’ve eaten the
bone there, but when he saw the house he took off. It was the first time Carl
had gotten a good look at a fox. He wished he had a camera, or a gun.
He got tired of the crows eventually. His kindness to them meant that large
murders of them roosted in the trees around his house, continually fighting
over the territory. They would wake him up early in the morning with their
screams, and even though he tried to tell himself it was a good thing to
wake up early, when the heads of squirrels and rabbits showed up in front
of his windows and in his gutter, he decided that animals weren’t good
company. He stopped leaving food out, so instead they ransacked his garbage
cans and he tried unsuccessfully to chase them off. Standing on his doorstep
in late December, he found the mutilated carcass of something that might’ve
been a raccoon, and he got pissed off at the frozen snow he had to stand on
and the road that wasn’t properly plowed and was a pain in the ass to ride a
bike in and he couldn’t call in sick or late to work when he’d never gotten
a proper fucking phone, and all those fucking birds were crowing at each
other over a goddamn nut and Carl would’ve thrown a rock at them but the
rocks were buried in snow so he threw snow at them and they fluttered away
when the snowballs came but landed back on their perches again. After a
brief fit, Carl stood there, doing nothing as the birds cried in disapproval.
So he got a gun. It took some time, because first he had to take the bicycle
down to Wal-Mart, and then they had to do a background check, and a few
weeks later he finally got his hands on it, but even though he never had
a gun, it had never really dawned on Carl that he had to know how to use
it. Letting it sit until the weekend came, he picked it up on a Saturday,
stepped out of the house, aimed, and shot. As far as Carl could tell, the
bullet missed every bird, made a magnificent arc in the air and landed
somewhere in the lake, but it did the trick. At the blast,
the crows took off in a wave from the house and the trees, as if traveling
on the sound waves. It was quiet for an hour, and then the birds trickled
back again and Carl shot again. He measured his weekends in gunshots.
Once a policeman came over to ask what was the matter. “I’m just getting
rid of the crows,” Carl said.
“You could set up one of those high-pitched frequencies that birds can’t stand.”
“I’d probably hear it.”
“You’re not supposed to hear it.”
“I’d hear it.”
“Well you’re scaring some of your neighbors. They reported you.”
“I don’t have neighbors.”
“Someone reported you.”
“But no one lives around here. Maybe it was a tourist.”
“We don’t get many tourists.”
“I’ve been seeing more of them.”
“Well . . .”
“If I’m putting anyone in danger, I’ll stop. Am I putting anyone in danger?”
“Just don’t make this a habit.”
“When the crows stop coming, I’ll stop shooting.”
The policeman left and never came back. Carl kept on shooting just like he
used to. He even started hitting his target every now and then. He would have
to pick up the body and dump it in a garbage can, but he was proud to do it.
Eventually, the birds realized that there was some danger to staying there
and they left too. By then the spring had come around and Carl started
watching the other animals that slowly became used to the new man in the
woods. They all kept their distance, and Carl kept his gun in a corner.
[. . .]
The camera panned to the right, and off in the distance he could see a house that
looked like a cabin and slowly became his house [. . .]
[. . .]
Carl stood on screen, or rather, his head floated on screen. Behind him were the
trees as always, but his head, misshapen by his beard, bounced back and forth as
he told a shattered story of the accident. Watching himself, the only thing he
could think of was how bad he looked in a beard. It needed to be trimmed, but
the closest thing he had to a razor was a pair of scissors he used to cut his
hair down to a reasonable size. In the past he would quickly swipe his razor
in-between his eyebrows to get rid of an emerging unibrow, but now that he wasn’t
doing that anymore, the hair growing above his nose drew attention to his
twitching nostrils and blinking eyes. He blinked too much, and his hair was a mess
and his beard was a mess. It didn’t even matter what he said.
“For some reason Robert, the guy in front, lost control. And you weren’t quite
sure why he lost control, you could almost convince yourself there was something
there, but he lost control and went right into the lake. Yknow, with the shock of
it, the guy in my car, the guy driving the car I was in, he lost control but
went the other way and stopped at a tree. He got out and jumped in the lake.”
The last shot for the segment was of Carl staring into the water. The screen
contained the entire pier with Carl on the end of it, his back to the camera
and the viewer. A voiceover blended into the silent contemplation. Since Carl’s
back was turned, it seemed as if the speaker were gossiping about him in some
faraway corner, where Carl would never have to find out what was being said
about him. It talked about trauma and denial, watching and waiting, devotion
and isolation. It didn’t appear to know if Carl believed in the monster or
not, but whatever he believed, he was delusional. The picture slowly faded out
as Carl watched the screen and Carl watched the sea. There was really nothing
else he could do.
“Get off my property!”
A few teenagers laughed and threw beer cans at Carl as he tried to shoo them
away. “What are you going to do, you crazy old shit!”
“Get off my property!”
“No!”
“I’m not old! Get off my property!”
The three teens hung out by their car, which had veered off the main road and was
now parked closer to Carl’s house than he preferred. They had parked there
before, and Carl had been amused by their secret drinking and petty bickering,
but when they started leaving their beer cans on the ground, harassing local
squirrels and scratching obscene remarks in the trees, he decided not to
like them anymore. At first he tried polite requests from a distance, but
now he was just yelling.
“Fuck you, old man!”
Carl searched the ground for a rock, like a chicken pecking for worms.
“What the fuck is he doing? He’s lost his mind!” And when he found one of
the rare large ones, he threw it as hard as he could at the biggest teen
of the three. He missed, hitting the roof of the car instead and making
a sizable dent. “What the fuck! That’s my dad’s car!” The big one
approached Carl with a swagger that made his shoulders look even bigger
than they already were. Carl turned around and ran into the house. The
big one smiled as he picked up his pace, but stopped altogether when Carl
came out of his house with the rifle.
“Shit man, I don’t want any trouble.”
“Get off my property.”
The teens ran to the car. It was good that they did, because Carl wasn’t
sure if the gun was actually loaded. He waited for the car to pull away
before pointing the rifle in the air and firing. It was loaded. The noise
and recoil made him jump while the driver hit the gas a little harder. The car
scrambled down the road.
Carl was getting tired of all the attention.
A lake tour once pulled up close to the pier. Carl heard someone talking in a false,
amplified voice and went to see what was the matter. All he could make out
as he stepped onto the pier were the words “the man who.” He hadn’t been close
enough to hear anything the guide had said before, and now that he was more
than close enough, almost ten feet away, the guide broke off and didn’t have
a thing to say. The boat looked like an oversized pontoon, a barge filled
with seats. On top of the navigator’s small cabin, a loudspeaker did
nothing. The boat wasn’t moving. The guide stared uncomfortably at Carl, as if
Carl were a dangerous wild animal appearing out of the brush, and Carl stared
back in silent, wary curiosity, very much like the animal he was being taken
for. No introductions. The two creatures observed each other for a few
minutes before the navigator, taking charge, fired up the engine and led
the boat away. A few of the tourists turned around to look at Carl as he
stepped off the pier, but they soon looked back at the guide, who was
loudly explaining the area’s natural beauty. The boats learned to stay away from
Carl’s pier.
[The only words to be made out in a long string of indecipherable text are
“representative from the hospital informed”, “moth”, “hoax”, “waste”,
“everything to everybody”, and “inert”.]
[. . .]His slicked back hair decorated a widening bald spot. His smooth shaven
skin housed some wrinkles that only managed to make him look more confident.
The face jutted into the landscape, scanning the trees and the house for signs
of life. Carl peered out from behind some tattered window shades, stroking his
scraggly beard as he thought about what to do. This was someone who wanted
something – a journalist or a cop – but the journalists had left him alone a
long time ago, and the cops weren’t paid enough to care about him anymore.
Or maybe he wanted to know something. The man looked back and forth as if he thought
it were possible to interrogate the squirrels and the birds, but he decided
against it and walked towards the house instead. Carl moved from window to window
in quiet pursuit, thinking that maybe the stranger knew he was being watched.
The broken doorbell gave out a rusty click, accompanied by repeated knocking
at the door. Carl realized he had to open up, and after about a minute he did.
“Holy shit!” Carl yelled. It was the first time he had sworn around another
person in about a decade. “Is that you, Will?”
“Of course it is,” Will answered. “Who else would come out here?”
“Not you. Not Will. Not like this . . .” Carl thought at first it wasn’t Will,
then corrected himself by saying it was a different Will. The man wasn’t
quiet anymore. He was assured. He wasn’t the Will who tagged along. Now he
was a man who could suddenly drop in on someone like it had been days since
they’d last met. “Not talking like that or dressing like that . . .”
“Well who are you? Look at you.” There was something of a pause as Will
looked at a man he would’ve otherwise pegged as shaggy and tattered.
He couldn’t look at Carl and think that everything was right.
“Jesus, it’s been awhile.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you back?”
“I don’t know. I’d just heard about you and wanted to see what was going on.”
“Nobody’s said anything about me in years.”
“Well I didn’t want to come then . . . yknow some people tried
asking me questions?”
“They did?”
“I said ‘No comment’ and they left me alone.”
“That was it?”
“I guess I wasn’t the story.” They stopped to give each other time to think.
“Do you want to come in?”
“What about the tavern?” Carl didn’t answer right away. “Is it still there?”
“It don’t look so good.”
“How?”
“I’m not too sure. I see it as I pass by. It don’t look so good. Run down.”
“Wanna take the truck?”
“Yeah. Sure. It’s a nice truck.”
“It’s a rental.” Will spouted out an incomprehensible make and model as if the
car were actually his. As Carl climbed into the passenger seat, Will told him
to hop in.
Will drove slowly along the winding road, as if he expected ghosts to leap in
their way. “Jesus,” he said. “You’ve spent your whole fucking life on this road.”
“A good chunk of it.”
“I couldn’t stand living in the same town anymore. I got out. I’m getting the
creeps right now.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t very far to the tavern, but since neither person could come up
with something to say, they focused solely on the road ahead. Will almost
missed the turnoff, despite the fact that there wasn’t another road for a
mile in either direction. “I guess I didn’t recognize the place,” he said.
Carl consoled him by telling him that it wasn’t the same tavern. After Will
had left, a series of improvements and additions had made the place look like
an offshoot of some nationwide franchise, but ever since then there hadn’t been
any maintenance done at all. A goofy neon sign was missing letters, and grass
slowly took over the pavement. As Will opened the heavy oak front door, the
hinges gave out a terrible screech. On the inside, so long as they could ignore
the slightly different position of the bar, it was the old hangout again,
with a little more silly shit hanging from the walls.
Will walked up to the bar and got the attention of the vaguely bored woman
who would’ve been serving drinks if there were anyone at the bar. “Where’s
the old man?”
[. . .]
[. . .]after, I had no reason to stay. It was a nightmare. I gathered up whatever
little money I could, got a ride to the bus station and left. I can’t remember
– not even now – what the destination was on the ticket. But I figured eventually
I’d find a place big enough to get lost in. I think I told everyone I was going on
a sabbatical or something, I needed some time off. I’m pretty sure everyone knew
I wasn’t coming back. Nobody seems to recognize me now . . . I like that.
“God, I can’t fucking stand small towns. I can’t stand this one. This one just
keeps getting smaller. Do you see that woman behind the bar? She’s the youngest
person I’ve seen in the whole town. And she ain’t that young! She’s right
at the point where she tells herself her tits are beginning to sag. She wants out.
“I’m in Kansas City now. It’s enough. I didn’t really settle down in it so much
as I grabbed the cheapest apartment in the worst neighborhood I could find and
begged for work. I got a job in a gas station and spent most of my time making
sure that teenagers weren’t stealing anything.
“I saw you on TV. I could never tell what you were saying. I knew what they
were saying you were saying – that there was some godawful monstrosity
out there, but that’s never what you said. You were saying some
crazy shit, Carl. There was something supernatural going on in your head.
I wanted to see you then, but . . . but I already talked about that.
“I started going to school. It took a long time. And it wasn’t a college college,
with cute little girls walking around in tight jeans. We all had bags under our
eyes and took classes whenever we could. I got a whole bunch of classes in business
and communications. Business because it sounded like money. Communications because
I needed to learn how to talk. I’m doing a good job, ain’t I? Look at my lips
moving, I bet you never saw that back when you used to know me. You’re thinking,
‘Who the hell is this guy who talks so much?’ I bullshit all my business teachers
into giving me good grades, and I used all that business-ish precision to convince
my communications teachers that I wasn’t just another bullshitter.
“Once – I think this was right after I had bickered my way from a B+ to an A-,
and when you’re living on scholarships that’s a huge fucking difference – some
girl walks up to me after class. She looked a lot like the bartender does, and
she said it was impressive, that what I had done back there was impressive.
Impressive! No one ever called me that! You better believe it, I married her.
Not right away, of course. I had to fuck her a few times before I got around
to that . . . but you see what I mean.
“Things are just going up. They’ve been that way for awhile. A wife, kids.
I’m a PR man, middle-management type stuff, just enough for me . . . The biggest
thing I did was convince a chemical manufacturer to start a few charity and
regulatory organizations after one of its plants had a nasty leak . . . but none
of this small town superstitious shit. I do what I can with what I have. The only
reason I’m down here is to see how you’re doing, see if they killed you yet. I
didn’t want my family to come. This is my thing. I don’t want it to be theirs.
This is the last time I’m coming back here, I’m damn sure about that much.”
“The kitchen’s open now, would you like to order something?” Will had
two empty glasses in front of him and one that was three quarters full.
He insisted that his glasses be lined up on the bar so he could keep track of
what he was doing, but his elaborate explanation seemed to be an excuse to flirt
with the bartender. “You don’t really have to if you don’t want to, if you run out
of glasses or something,” but no one was there and she didn’t want to talk and she
did what he said.
“Burger and fries, please,” Will said. “You want something?”
“Same.”
“Two, please. And get this man a beer.”
“I’m not done with my –”
“Just have one fucking beer!”
“Fine.”
“Get him a beer.”
“How would you like those burgers done?”
“Medium,” Will said.
“Same.”
“Okay, I’ll be back soon with your order.” She smiled meaninglessly and walked away.
“And get him a beer! A Budweiser!”
“Well, nothing much happened. I got Pete’s old place . . . yknow that was
Pete’s place? It was where he went, where he went to shit in the woods or pass
out drunk or something. Did you know about that?” The bartender placed a beer
in front of Carl. He watched it carefully.
“No I didn’t,” Will said after a pause. “I figured he had to go somewhere. I
didn’t know where.”
“I got it and Jenny went off and got married.”
“To who?”
“Don’t know. I fixed the place up a bit, people started asking me questions.
They got a little angry. My parents passed on. People stopped asking questions.
I still have my job with the factory.” Not having many major events which Will
didn’t already know about, and not wanting to go into all the details of his
daily life, Carl found that there wasn’t much else worth saying, not to someone
like Will. “I live by the lake.”
“That’s it? The bartender brought the two hamburgers in little plastic baskets,
fries strewn liberally over both. Will’s frustration turned around when he
realized that the bartender had to lean over to give him his meal. “Wow, thank
you! That was quick! Did you know what we were going to order beforehand?”
“We have a good cook,” she said and walked back to the corner where, in-between
orders, she had been polishing the same spot on the bar with what appeared to
be napkins.
Will stared at her ass as she walked away, then remembered why he had been
frustrated. “That’s it?”
“Yes.” Carl, after taking a sip, slowly decorated his burger as he prepared
himself to eat it. He liked this kind of food much better now that he was
unaccustomed to it. The atmosphere made for most of the flavor. By now a
few people had begun gathering at various points throughout the room. Nobody
was there to stop them from smoking, so they smoked.
“I will admit it,” Will said. He made a strange gesture in the air with his
right hand. “You have a beautiful view out there. And a nice long time to
look at it.”
“This is a good hamburger.”
“It tastes like shit.”
Will felt uncomfortable on the barstool. He squirmed back and forth and nearly fell off until finally, complaining that he couldn’t eat hunched over a bar, he asked the bartender if it was all right to move everything to a table. She wasn’t sure why he asked and said it was okay. “Cmon Carl,” he mumbled. “We’re going over there.” They gathered their baskets of half-eaten hamburgers and moved to a table where they could sit across from each other. “May as well bring these too.” Will took his empty glasses and brought them to the table. Carl helped. The disadvantage at the table was that Will would have to get up to order a beer, but he didn’t have too far to go.
“Carl,” he said. He seemed to have been inspired by all this motion. “Carl, you need to get out of this town. Why don’t you just – get out?”
“I don’t see what you mean.”
“What do you mean, you don’t see what I mean . . . There’s nothing to this town.”
“So I should just move?”
“Yeah! Hell, I’ll help you find a place if you need, I can probably land you a job with one of my firm’s clients. We work for a lot of factories, and I know a lot of people in Kansas City. There was one time, I got a factory out of a lot of shit by telling them to set up some charities. That’s the kind of stuff you don’t hear about very often. Not in a place like this.” Carl suddenly wanted to leave. People only offered that kind of assistance when they were trying to justify themselves. “This town is nothing. Taylor is nothing. It’s got nothing for you.”
“I’ve got enough.”
“Of course you say that. When I was here it had just more than enough. For the first few years after I left, I heard it had even more than that. But now it’s going down. I could see that just by going through town. And now, it has less than when I was here. It has enough. And pretty soon it will have less than enough.”
Carl was chewing on his second-to-last bite of hamburger. It seemed to annoy Will that Carl could stall for time like this. “I don’t know what to say . . . thanks for the offer, but I’m pretty sure I could make do.”
“I’m not offering you shit.” Carl was confused. “I am telling you that you should get out. You have no reason to stay here.”
“I have reasons.”
“The only reason you have to stay is that you’re already here.”
“No . . .” Carl wondered what the use of this argument was. Will wondered the same thing. They continued. “I’ve got more than that.”
“This town gives you nothing.”
“It gives . . . something.”
“What does it have?”
“Enough.”
“It’s got one fucking grocery store!”
“So what?”
“Oh fuck . . .”
“But what about you?”
“What about it?” Carl asked. He picked at the remainder of his fries, slowly biting them down inch by inch to distract himself from the conversation.
“Drink your fucking beer.”
“I am.” He took a sip.
“Yeah, shit, I’m getting another.” On his way to the bar he shouted, “What about you?” without turning around to look at Carl. The bartender, a little startled, replied, “I don’t drink,” and Will promptly responded that he wasn’t talking to her. “What about Carl? What kind of person is Carl?” He came back with a pitcher, filled Carl’s glass to replace the two or three sips Carl had taken and continued with his interrogation.
“What I’m saying is . . .” Will looked like a salesman. He moved his arms around to emphasize words, as if he could create the borders of the argument. “What kind of person were you? What kind of person were you becoming? What kind of person could you have been, if you had chosen differently, or said a few things differently? What kind of person could you be? Think about it.”
“I think I was . . .”
“You’re not supposed to answer the questions, Carl. I’m saying that you could be a better person if you left the town.”
“How?”
“You could be more.”
“How could I be more?”
“You could have more, you could do more, you could meet more people, make more money. You could be more comfortable. There are the means to do anything in a city. Even in Kansas City, there are the means to do anything. You could get what you wanted.”
“I have what I want.”
“No you don’t! You don’t know what you want. You could have so much at your disposal to make you a better person.”
“I can improve myself here.”
“Don’t you ever want to try?”
“I wouldn’t want to risk it. It would seem . . . arrogant to test a thing like that.”
“Test what?”
“I wouldn’t want to abandon a good thing just because I could.”
“So you’ll just stick to it?” Will ran a hand through his hair, but stopped when he got to his bald spot. “That’s called cowardice, Carl. It could very well make you a coward.”
“I can afford to be a coward.”
“What will it take to get through to you?” Will said. He refilled his glass from the pitcher. “Drink your beer.”
“Now I didn’t want to bring it up,” Will continued, “but I think I have to.” He changed his tone. He was a friend now, someone who could use his best and last card because only he had his friend’s interest at heart. “It’s a sensitive topic. It’s a sensitive topic for me, too. It hurts. You know how much it hurts. Do you know how much it hurt me to hear you lived in Pete’s place?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re living in a fucking grave.”
Carl picked up one fry and placed it on top of another. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well I do.” Will’s arms stopped framing logical arguments in the air. They flailed around, haphazardly creating a windstorm in-between him and Carl. The only thing they seemed incapable of was knocking over the near-empty pitcher. “I do. You’re living like a monk in a cemetery. I thought maybe I could get you out of there just by telling you what you were missing, but you’re stuck in your own little world. Your own superstition.”
Carl looked at the table as he dragged around a salt shaker in its own little circle. “I don’t really see it that way.”
“It’s superstition and you know it. Your friends die and you sit by their graves and wait. You tell stories about the Thing that Killed Them, or what’s worse, you don’t say a thing and let the story grow on its own. You probably have your own little rituals of watching over things or some nonsense. You wait for your friends to wash up on the shore. You wait for the Thing to sweep you away. You wait for death like it was fucking Christ.” Will was swept up into a surprising eloquence. He condemned everything that might’ve seemed quiet and holy about Carl’s existence. His job barely counted as honest work. His house was a tombstone. His lake was a puddle of slime. There was nothing in this town, in this county that meant anything unless Carl wanted it to mean something. “Be reasonable,” Will sputtered. Carl is not a memorial. He’s just a man. “Be a man. Come to the city. Do reasonable things. Talk to reasonable people. You’ll feel better. I’ll feel better. Do it.”
Carl looked up when Will had stopped. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” The last remnants of sobriety fell from Will’s eyes.
“Why not?”
“Just a man.”
“Ah fuck it. You’re going home.”
Will paid in a hurry, making sure to leave a tip by flinging a wad of bills onto the table. “Carl you’re driving me home.” Carl was still trying to insist on paying, so it was easy for Will to sweep him out to the truck.
“Carl, you’re driving yourself home.” Will leaned with one hand against the side of the truck, his head pointed at the ground in case of emergency.
“I haven’t driven in –”
“Do you think I’m in any condition to drive?” Will flung the keys at Carl’s head. Carl was able to catch them with a massive flinch.
“I don’t think you should trust me with this.”
“Don’t worry.” Will made his way to the other side of the car. “The way they build these new cars, you can’t crash. If you run into the lake, you break the lake.”
Carl climbed up as Will struggled into his seat, closed the door and leaned against the window. “Key in ignition. Foot on brake. Pull the stick. Fuck the seatbelts.” The truck pulled away in fits and starts, lunging forward and stopping and lunging forward again until Carl got control of his foot. “Jesus, you’re making me sick,” Will said. There wasn’t a car on the road and the lake was at least a block away. There was nothing to be afraid of, but Carl drove slowly just to be sure. But even at this slow speed, the trees seemed to blend into each other. They seemed unimportant at this speed. “Carl, Carl, just keep on going. You don’t have to pull in. Just keep on going.” Carl pulled off the road when he saw his house. “Fuck you, Carl.”
As the truck pulled to a stop, Will opened his door and fell out the side. Carl stopped faster than he would’ve preferred to keep from running over a misplaced arm or leg. “No wonder I couldn’t get my wife to come. Do you know what she said, Carl? Do you know what she said? She said it was an ‘alone trip.’ She’s probably cheating on me with some sober sonofabitch.” He started laughing from his awkward position on the ground. Carl was in no mood to help the man up. He stared at the dashboard until he remembered how to shut the truck off, then he got out and started walking to the pier. As he passed by his house, Will picked himself up and careened towards the walls, slamming into the aluminum siding as he vomited on the window, the ground and himself. Shortly thereafter, he slid down the wall.
“Would you like to stay awhile?” Carl asked.
“I’m not staying so long as I can walk,” Will mumbled from the ground. “Gimmee the keys.” He stretched out a hand, palm up. Carl put the keys in, it closed and went back down. “If you’d just leave, you could be new. You could forget and I could forget. I could forget and you could forget.” Will’s mumbling trailed off as Carl walked to the pier. “I could forget and I could forget.” The waves drowned out any sound of voices.
Carl sat down on the pier and watched. At one point there was a wave or swell of water which grew abnormally large. He stared at it and it went away. The nonsensical rhythmic gibbering of the waves made more sense than anything Will had said, and even though this meant that the lake was either a vast Nothing or a vast Incomprehensibility, Carl felt comfortable with it. At least it was larger than anything Will could spell out with his arms.
“Carl! Carl!”
Will was a standing figure in the distance. Carl couldn’t tell how long he had been staring at the water.
“I’m going now!”
“Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Carl thought about walking over, but it wasn’t necessary. “Goodbye!” He didn’t want to see the vomit that had probably soaked into Will’s shirt. “Goodbye!” Carl imagined the truck as it veered through the railing into the lake or was pulled over by a police car or traveled safely if uncertainly to whatever motel Will would recuperate in. What he saw was the truck disappearing in the direction of the road. Will would never be back. No one would. Carl didn’t want to stand up.
He looked back to the lake.
It sat there.
Maybe, he thought, he’d finally get around to buying a boat.