The Pusher

Short pushes on long lives.

 

The Pusher:

Well they were all round about, some slept and some ate; drunk and stoned, belligerent and raw to teeth and spit, simple basics. Now that was fine, as always, for I admire a man who likes to sharpen his sight a bit at night. A man who, like me, feels clearer in thinking the more things blur. This was all fine and right with God, and the other, spare the man who loved his tie and held his drink with a cocked eye. Now for him, he sat maybe two or so away from me then. And no, it wasn’t his jokes that struck the ‘chains’ in me, or his wild gestures and lazy eye’s wanderings that demonized him, no, it was his smell.

He was wrong you see. You could feel it on your tongue. And not wrong like the queens that spread aids on the street and sell them-selves for a night on the town or a bowling alley trip, even though he had the same fashion sense. He was wrong by his scent… that of carnal fray, of hookers. Now this alone of course leads no where but sickness for your minds eye, but you see now, you see what other things he might have had, things that doctors will find. He had the lines about his eyes, those of wear and fatigues from years of terrible things that only drinking cure. A target in wobbly vapors lined his head and eyes, hanging above him like a saint’s halo. For him it was not for the higher power. This vapor burned him up.  It showed an injured soul. It felt like gravity. It was more ghostly really. And the longer I looked at him out the sides of my eyes, the larger it grew. Some may call it an aura perhaps that followed his personality, his loud and vile personality. Why truly it was clear as day, clear like wedding bells or bearing witness to the snow. Mind you now those things are often fine and well but as you know, as you must see… this halo for him was not one like a saint born in an artist’s mind or even one above, those down on their luck. His was a suicide notice written on slate that couldn’t be erased. Not for him, not for anybody.

I wanted to become his friend then, to gage him closely. And me, well I’m rather good with friendship at times, for the sure and steady like a ship on a cruise. But his usefulness seemed to dull out like old copper jewelry with every story… with every crime of his life that somehow went unpunished and re-missed by the creator and equalizer of things. This was very odd to me.

It was night, and it was near done then. The drunkard spoke more often darting fire in my ear as I braced him from the bar like the lever to a s**t bed all ready to go, all stumbling and singing. He was full of venom and something else that nauseated me with every step. That of course you already know. The smell was stronger in the wind, a perfume waft of foreign cologne and ‘the fray’. The taste was more wrong than enough. He gave me those chills, you know, ‘chills and chains’ that run about your spine on needle tips, the ones that burn muscle and shake you for the wind’s amusement. He babbled on for long spells between breaths, drunkard speech from heart’s blackest words without inhibition.

He yelled a little bit, but like I said I didn’t mind all that, we were friends and my stomach could handle more than enough. I had endless strength of sight.

 “Byron” he would bellow and spit “You’re a good man!! And you know wh-hats hot in towns like theesh”. For a bit longer he pierced into me. I simply paced him up and about on the sidewalk and grass, until finally…finally… he bit upon some rather foul words.

            “The rag” he said. Yes those are his words, the words he spat at me, on my polite skin and shirt. At first I thought maybe he said “The-rails” real drunk and slurred like. But no, the more you think about what he said… the more you realize it was all the more likely to be said to a guy like me. Well, like a guy he thought I was.

 He was well groomed and that was his deal. You know how everyone has their ‘deal’ in life… how some men focus on jokes and funny faces. Others they focus on women and romantic foolishness. Well this guy, he most assuredly focused on clothes. A damn card carrying member of “dress not for the job you got but the one you sought…” and it’s a shame a man that well dressed used such language, especially such language about women I’ve seen. “Why, she sells herself on the rag!” he says, a filthy lie, like people can’t feel insults and words don’t ground in on a minds-eye like fingers stab. Why cant people understand such a simple idea… why do I have to always work so hard? I don’t mind it entirely but the hours are long. I find my self constantly doing it though, without off days, as if I am the only defender of words and the civilized era, and I think mostly that I am. I think that quite often really.

Thing was this well dressed drunk… he said it about a hooker a bit down the road, but more still about someone not around to hear it said. Mind you all hookers are filthy and low, but not so low. Their slates are filled with personal hatred after all. It’s not so low that you can try and bury them with a forked tongue, and still worse by forming word swords and digging one in on someone’s back without them seeing or hearing you do it. Now that is worse, quite simply the worst.

Well you can see now… why he died, Karma Police to put it simply.

It was like this you see, a bus came by and he stepped out for a bit. Well… he jumped out almost you might say in a reach. Guess he got excited by something and boom, (really more of crisssshhhh noise and the brakes rough screech.) he was out of this plain of existence and heading down the stairs to hell just like that. With the headlights on his face he let out a noise like the sound of a drowning goose all Gahhhhhhh, well a lot like that anyway. There was so much glass and blood and hell to watch littering the air and road that I flinched for a bit, mind you I don’t often flinch, and god knows who had to clean all that up but I knew it wasn’t going to be me. With the speed at which he met that bus I felt they might simply become one thing instead of one and many things like it did.

It looked odd though… the crash… like the moon wanted to take a picture of it all, and the clouds knowing it moved if only for a camera flash moment so it shined brighter and lit up everything that was wet. I can’t blame them though… it was a rather horrific scene ripe for cameras and film. The screams on the bus almost acted like the man’s goodbye serenade, a bagpipe chorus all nice and loud and trembling. And with all that at his funeral he couldn’t have been that bad.

I suppose damn near everyone deserves a song.

The smoke billowed out of the busses underside and the driver…well he looked scared and sued up the a*s. Mind you now I saw all this from the bushes, like I said ‘I’m not going to clean it up.’ I wasn’t completely sure if anyone could.

With a hand to his receiver the driver got all red and I thought I saw tears swell up in his eyes, but it could have been the roads reflection or some optical illusion really. I guess I just wanted him to be. Seemed like the right way to react. He looked blamed and convicted rubbing on his wallet vacation photos to see his wife’s face, and the cops…well they would see him as a shaky man, a family man with good vision two by two. He was a good driver, clean record I’m sure. The driver wouldn’t meet any cell or suspension, as I’m sure he’d say to the cops “The man just jumped right out in front of me… I was going 55 I couldn’t stop in time…I’m so sorry….” and then something real weepy and sad for sure. The cops would post up a tape line soon enough… once they got there that was. I knew they would soon be on their way to click photos and draw lines about a half-body under some tires. Collect up all pieces of drunken guy here, and ‘Oh look’ drunken guy there. Throw each piece into separate bags labeled “Mess number 1.” and “Mess number 2.” like there favorite child hood fossil hunt. Then they’d all sit about and suppose around coffee and dead body scraps until someone had to s**t.

I’d be on my way then. I was truly full of things to see, and if I got bored I could see them anyways without watching. You don’t have to watch to see something. I knew the score and trials and sets, the lights camera action of it all step by step.

            The cops would tend to set out and send a man up for these things, a goat for slaughter in a way, but in all honesty things like this aren’t mans fault.

            See sometimes people off themselves -snap- just like that. They take jumps off into trains… or buses… or from bridges and people think it’s because of some sudden righteous suicide, from self revelation, or some accidental murder. But that’s not really it… its simple Karma. I’ve seen it happen so many times that its textbook.

I didn’t know the man truly but I saw his bed like it is now. It was of glass, blood, vulgarity and broken things, bitter self comfort and loathing filth. He slept in it all tucked in cozy with his greyhound sheets.

I could see this Karma about him. It’s not an enigma or un-seen force like some suppose. It’s not imaginary like some will say. It’s like hands, large brilliantly gray hands from unknown depth, with a conscious knowledge of action, giving poor confused people a little push in the right direction. Sometimes that direction is work or play, sometimes its home and sometimes… sometimes it’s the front of a greyhound going down a freeway. Anyway it steers you it never reads wrong. It’s adding up a tab that you can’t pay back in smiles and free food. I’ve seen its vigilance. Its swifter punishment does more than the babbling cows in the court house could ever do. It’s counted dozens of walking men in graveyard suits and it’s made its mark. I see the marks. I even know the men’s weight.

The night was so dark and I don’t think I told you. You see with the cloud cover and dark gray blue buildings and streets it was almost entirely solid and whole. A blanket if you will that allowed certain people the latitude to do whatever they felt was righteous or well for them. This of course was not entirely a bad thing for some things desire such cover… some things need it to work and function. Some things need it just so they can still go home. I was one of those things.

Well as I said, my night was wasted to be sure on a friend who left rather rudely, nothing but a corpse and morgue blue boys to see for now. They’ll go for ‘that’ culprit and find none as always in this fine city, nothing but empty hands and open files with me all the while knowing the un-acceptable truth. And like clockwork comes out that stamp of ‘suicide’ topped off in red. It’s nice that they make his hell seem so honorable.

Author's Note

Hammer away.

Reviews

[Jerrica Benton]

i like the general tone/quality of this piece.

however, some lines/sections came across as a bit rushed.

also, i would do away with the slight rhyming. i'm not sure if that's intentional or not but it reads kind of sing-song-y
and in very rare instances does sing-song-y not connotate juvenile.

NOT SAYING THIS IS JUVENILE OR NOTHIN'!