story post #1

Jawbone

I’d be thirty-seven come my next birthday, but Doc said I had the jawbone of an eighty-year-old. That’s how I got off the Wrigley’s and made the switch to Pall Malls. That’s what sent me into the store that day.

I’d smoked my last driving into town and knew, if I didn’t get a fresh pack, I’d be a bundle of nerves the rest of the day. I drove past Rat Hole Mountain, through the morning fog that was lifting up off the river. When Luther’s came into view, I checked the gauge. I had over a quarter of a tank. I could’ve kept on driving, picked up my smokes somewhere farther down the line. But I didn’t. Instead, I pulled into the lot out front of the store. That’s when I saw her.

“You sumbitch.”

They were the first words she’d spoken to me in three years. All I could do was nod back. It was pure reflex, mechanical, oddly comfortable. I said her name. She glared at me but she didn’t walk away. I watched her clench her jaw and tap her foot against the blacktop. Then she tore into the bag of Funyuns she’d just bought and popped a few in her mouth. She chewed them up like plug tobacco.

“You might wanna be careful chewing those things that way,” I said, climbing down out of the cab of the truck. “Ain’t healthy.”

“What do you know?” she said back.

“Not much. But I know TMJ when I see it.”

“Quit your preaching,” she said, offering me the bag.

I took a few out, stacked them on my pointer finger, and started eating them off one by one. They were her favorites but, me, I never much cared for them. They tasted about as bad as I remembered.

“What you into these days?” I asked.

“Nothin. You?”

“Same. I was heading into town to take a look at this fella’s porch that rotted out. He wanted an estimate on a new one. I’m half-tempted not to go. Hell, I got work running out my ears.”

It was a lie. I’d been out of work so long I wasn’t even sure where all my tools were. I don’t know why I said it. It just seemed like the thing to do. Women like a man with confidence, so maybe I thought my bragging might do something for her. Maybe I figured she’d be more inclined to take up with me again if she thought I was in the money.

I leaned up against the side of my pickup and scraped a few fly specks off the hood with my fingernail. A logging truck thundered by out on the main road. A few customers shuffled into Luther’s. Then, like it was something I didn’t know, she says to me “Sure is hot out.”

“Hot enough,” I said back. Then I came out with it. “Good day to make cozy with a cold beer or two.”

We drove the back roads out into the country, kicking up a rooster tail of dust as we went. I drove with one hand and peeled the wrapper off my Pall Malls with the other. I shook one out, shoved the lighter knob in. I could see her watching me out of the corner of my eye.

“What the hell?” she said, her statement punctuated by the “ping” of the lighter popping back out.

“Doctor’s orders,” I said taking a good long drag for effect.

“You’re still ‘bout full of shit,” she said with a chuckle.

“Well hand me one of them beers then. See if I can flush out my system.”

The river was down but the water at the swimming hole was still over your head. The two of us bobbed around for a good twenty minutes then crawled back up on the shore to dry off. She tip-toed around, extra cautious-like. I knew she was checking for snakes. She was scared to death of the things.

I fished the last two beers from the cooler and spread out in the shade of an old shag bark oak. I propped myself up on an elbow and watched the river some. Every now and again a dragonfly or damsel would come skittering across the surface of the water. I never did see a fish jump, though. Too damn hot. They’d all moved off to the deep water. They were waiting the heat out, same as the two of us.

She was wearing her hair longer these days. I watched her grab a handful of it and twist the water out. Then she walked over and sat down next to me. I motioned toward the beer I’d laid out for her. She snatched it up and pulled the tab.

“Last one?” she asked.

I nodded.

“But I got more back at the house.”


It didn’t take her long to piss me off. First thing she did was pull my old Mepps cap off the hook where I keep it.

“Good God almighty,” she said. “You still have this thing?”

“Put that back.”

“Look at the headband! There’s more oil in it than you got in the crank case on that old truck.”

“I guess something’s wrong with my truck now too.”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby.”

She walked over to the fridge for some of that beer I’d promised her. I knew what was coming next. The door swung open and she all but gagged. She put a hand over her mouth and said something I couldn’t make out.

“Just help yourself to anything in there you think you might like,” I said. I said it in a smartass kind of way. By now my fur was up and I figured we may as well get this first fight out of the way. But she didn’t take the bait. She could be that way sometimes. Rather than start in on me, she just rescued two more beers from the toxic dump that was my refrigerator, crossed over to where I was standing, and handed one to me.

“You get cable?” she asked.

She didn’t wait for me to answer. She spotted the clicker on one of the couch cushions and picked it up. She turned on the set and started running through the channels. She flipped right past a fishing show she knew I’d want to watch only to stop on QVC. They were selling some kind of blanket. It looked like a regular old quilt to me. But to hear them talk you’d think the thing came straight from NASA. I think I even heard one of them say “space-age polymer” but I can’t swear to that.

“Buy me something pretty,” she said, flopping down on the couch still holding the clicker.

“You don’t want that old thing,” I said. “Liable to be full of small pox or something.”


Two months later the mulch thing happened. We were averaging three or four fights a week by then, but neither one of us was even close to losing steam. Most of the fights we had started over simple stuff but wound up being about something else altogether, something bigger. This one was no exception.

It looked like she was preparing for a family of beavers to drop in for a snack. It was not the kind of thing you wanted to walk in on after a long day at the unemployment commission.
She’d gone down to the dollar store earlier in the day and bought these bowls, a matching set. She brought them home and laid them out strategically throughout the trailer. There was one on the end table next to the couch. One on the bar beside the phone. One in the crapper. I figured there must’ve been about ten of them altogether. The thing of it was, she’d filled each with stuff she raked up in the yard—pine cones, old dry pods off the cigar tree, the occasional gumball. The rest was just wood chips.

She was sitting on the couch thumbing through a magazine when I first came in. I could hear the AC unit humming in the back bedroom, but it still must’ve been about eighty in the living room. Indian summer had been bearing down extra hard on us. I peeled off my t-shirt and dropped it in the floor. I flopped down in my easy chair and threw the lever. I put my feet up and let out a groan.

“What’s with the mulch?” I asked her.

I had my finger in one of those little bowls, sort of stirring the contents around a little. You should’ve seen the look she gave me.

“It’s potpourri,” she said.

“They sell it like this now?”

“No. I made it. They were all out down at the store.”

“Oh.”

“Well. What do you think?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“I dunno,” I said. “Looks like mulch to me.”

“Well can you smell it?”

“That what I’m smelling? I thought you were cooking something. Cookies or I don’t know what.”

She let out a huff. She sprang up off the couch and started storming through the trailer, snatching up bowls as she went. She walked into the kitchen, her arms loaded down, and dumped the works into the trash can. It made a hell of a racket. I wheeled around.

“What the hell?” I said.

“Forget it. Just forget it. I’m through.”

“Through?”

“Yeah. Through!”

“What the hell’s eatin’ on you?”

“I try. I mean, I try real hard to make this place nice. But it’s pretty clear you don’t give a damn.”

“You’re talking crazy.”

“Am I?”

“By God.”

“Look, just forget it. You’re not interested in changing, so why should I worry about it?”

“Why you so keen on changing me? I mean, I’m a little curious here. What is it exactly that you think needs fixing?”

“It’s not ‘fixing.’ I’m just talking about making the place nice for us. That’s all.”

“Bullshit. You want to make the place, me, …whatever… into something other than what it is.”

“Now you’re the one talkin’ crazy.”

“No. I’m just telling you what you don’t want to hear.”

She crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow just so. I don’t think I even took a breath. I’d been putting my little sermon together for days.

“It’s the God’s honest truth,” I said.

“Why you gotta keep dragging God into it?”

“Nothing’s ever good enough for you. You’re all the time “fixin” this or “prettifying” that. It never ends. And it never ends cause you don’t know what you want. I mean, you couldn’t list it out if your life depended on it. That’s the reason you lit outta here for Raleigh. It’s why you came back. You think, if you keep running, if you keep buggering with stuff, one day you’ll be satisfied. But it ain’t working out for you and that’s cause the trouble ain’t stuff. The trouble is you.”

“So now you’re gonna tell me what I think?”

“Look, I ain’t some drag-dick off the street. I been around long enough to know a thing or two. Long enough to figure some stuff out.”

“Well thanks for nothing, Dr. Phil. You wanna talk about problems, let’s talk about problems.”

“Uncross your damn arms.”

“I’ll do what I like.”

“Yeah. That’s something else I’ve come to know.”

“That right? Okay then. Well, maybe so. But can you blame me? I mean, if all I did was wait around for you to do something, I’d be in one helluva fix.”

“You’re in one now. But I’ll drop a third nut before you do anything about it.”

“I thought we were talking about you now.”

“Alright then. Lay it on me.”

I crossed my arms and she started nodding. She knew I was mocking her. But she didn’t let it faze her. It was time to deliver the payload and that’s just what she did.

“You can’t forgive yourself,” she said.

“Forgive myself for what?”

“For what happened.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

She just looked at me.

“I have, but you won’t, and there’s no way I can make you,” she said.

“Forgive myself?”

“That’s right.”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“It ain’t rocket surgery.”

“Science.”

“What?”

“You mean ‘rocket science.’”

“Whatever. You know what I’m saying. ‘You can’t love someone unless you love yourself first.’ Ain’t that what they say?”

“That’s the biggest crock of shit I ever did hear. That’s something you read in a greeting card or see on some poster in a shrink’s office—something with rainbows and shit on it.”

She let out a sigh and laid her magazine across her lap.

“How many times we been through this?” she asked.

She was right. It was like we kept saying the same things over and over again. Had been for longer than I could recall. Still, I didn’t say as much. Didn’t bother telling her I knew she was right. All of a sudden I felt all talked out.

I got up and walked straight back to the bedroom. I laid across the bed for a minute or two. The AC unit blew a stream of cold air across my bare chest and in the dim light I thought I might even be able to catch a few winks. Sometimes, after going a few rounds the way I’d just done, I could sleep for hours.

But then the room started spinning and I sat up on the edge of the bed. I gripped the covers and balled my feet up inside my boots. Then I stood up and walked over to the closet. I didn’t have to look hard to find her suitcase. It was just inside the door.

I walked down the little hallway and into the living room. The trailer rocked a little. She was still in there, still thumbing through that magazine of hers, but she wasn’t whipping the pages like she’d been doing.

I flung the suitcase down on the couch right next to her.

“Getting to be that time ain’t it?” I said.

She looked up at me and I could see the tears boiling up. I turned my back on her, walked over to the bar, picked up my keys, and headed out the door for the truck.


She was gone by the time I got back. Maybe she got a neighbor to give her a ride to the bus depot. Maybe she’d decided to stay with an old friend a night or two till she could put some kind of game plan together. There was no way for me to know. Every time she left it was the same. No letter. No note. No nothing. She’d just be gone.

I opened up the case I’d got at Luther’s. I pulled four of them out and set them on the end table next to my chair. I put the rest in the crisper and cut on the evening news. I had two in me before they got around to giving the forecast.

They had a new fellow up there giving the report. His head was unusually large and his shirt didn’t fit him. He seemed nervous. The last guy they had turned out to be a meth-head. That’s how he got the axe.

There was no telling with this new fellow.

Maybe he’d make it, end up on a billboard with the rest of the NewsTeam. Maybe he’d shit his pants one night up there on the set or else come out with a cuss word when he thought his mike had been shut off. There were any number of ways for a guy like that to do himself in. And if you did it like that, up there in front of the camera, in front of God and your momma, it could wind up being your defining moment. People would see you on the street, ten or twenty years later, and they’d say to one another, “Remember that guy? Remember when he dropped that F-bomb on the six o’clock news?” That’s how they’d remember you. And a fellow could spend a lifetime trying to live down a thing like that.


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© 2009, Curt Alderson. All rights reserved in accordance with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.