Carpenter

The world continues to spin under the tainted sky and eroding earth along the gulf waters, in Carpenter

Carpenter

Word Count: 5,408

Cathy’s nails claw at my inner thigh as she pulls herself up from my lap. “What?” she asks in an exhale. I can feel the stoic humidity shift in the car, it worsening the long trails of sweat disappearing into my collar. It hadn’t registered that she’d stopped though, my eyes distracted by the boats passing along the windshield through chain link diamonds and spreading moister on the glass. I used to think I heard sirens, the kind that seemed to be just over the hill behind me, enough to make my palms sweat as I waited to see the lights break loose. A side effect of living under one for two decades, the sound too shrill and full of meaning to fade quietly into the mind, even now.

I repeat the question back to her, sitting up, and making sure I am clear of the steering wheel.

“You said something? About ghosts?” Her mouth hangs as she battles to keep me at attention, her hand pulling, and grip firm.

I look around the vacant warehouse lot on the docks. We’d parked just shy of the loading area, inches from the slopping concrete flooded with stale uncirculated water and debris. “I uh, I don’t remember.”

She nods, and I wait for more questions instinctively, but none come. Cathy, instead, returns her attention to where she was most comfortable, where I was most comfortable. It was going to be the last time I saw Cathy, a decision I was sure to go back on, so why bother telling her but for right now, it felt good to let go. She’d see it for what it was, anyway, a grab for attention.

I keep my eyes forward, never closing them, afraid I’d see X rays again, hanging on the pale backlight, the picture of my lungs filled to the brim with snow, like an old TV after the cable went out. I hadn’t told anybody. I hadn’t even let Dr. Devero say the word. Instead, I keep my eyes on the water and what lay beyond it.

 

 

Carpenter, Louisiana was entering another torpid and damp August in the burning reflection of the slight New Orleans high rise. Barges and tug boats pull themselves down the center of the Mississippi, the green divide wafting the breathing air with the scent of burning wood and garbage under the overlapping plum clouds, still diseased by Carpenter’s oil refinery that hadn’t seen its lights on in nearly two years.

I drop Cathy off a quarter to five. Right on time, she’d said before asking to bum a Camel. Even now, I find it hard to let go. I crinkle the box in my hand, about to toss the whole damn thing at her when I realize I needed one for the ride home. As for her obsession with the place and time, I didn’t want to know. It was just as convenient for me, and that’s all that mattered.

The drive home was a mix of elongated shadows stretching along narrow asphalt between abandoned stores and forgotten gas stations lining Main Street. During the election months, Major Brownlee had the community buying in on his plan to restore the crumbling stone buildings which meant sandbagging the empty store fronts, and boarding up the front glass until hurricane season passed and a more ideal time to remodel came about. That was two years ago. Not long after he was re-elected, word got out that the refinery was closing, and might as well have taken the town with it. Seemed like it had in a lot of ways. Places like Chevron, BP, and Shipyard Manufacturing Companies set up shop in the town during those last few months, like sharks hunting in blood soaked waters. They offered jobs to those who had no other option. I’d read somewhere that in fifty years, another twenty-seven miles of coastline would be claimed by the sea and that’s more than enough to send Carpenter and other towns dotting the gulf to the bottom. A lot of good those jobs would do them then.

My plate is sitting on the table, cold, when I get home. It must have been Dennis’ night to pick. He was the only one who ever wanted Pancakes for supper. I check the living room before dumping the food in the garbage and positioning the paper plate on top so that Karen wouldn’t see. I spend the rest of the night whirling the last few swigs of beer around in the bottom of the dark glass bottle, listening. I never finish anything.

Sure that Karen is asleep, I balance the bottle on the arm of the chair, get up and head to the back of the house. The floors never lie. Each step on the hard uneven slates cry against each other like a grasshoppers back legs. A few steps from the door, a dim yellow appears, outlining the door.

Dennis is asleep in my spot, his small body curled in my imprint, his blonde hair contrasting against the dark tone of Karen’s hair and my own. Karen looks at me over the rims of her dollar store glasses, uneven on her nose. That look suggests that it may be best if I just sleep on the couch. I paint my good to be home smile on with grand gesture and walk to the bed. Dennis is lanky for a five year old, closing in on four feet. When I sift my hands under him, he doesn’t start. Not even as I lift and carry him to his own bed.

The lights are off when I get back to the bedroom, and Karen remains silent for an hour after I get in bed, the both of us laying in darkness. We both snored like freight trains trying to climb Mount Everest, so I know she isn’t asleep. We are both waiting on the same thing, but both too stubborn, both too use to the quips and verbal back hands to attempt small talk, let alone a conversation. Dennis didn’t know it, but he was our go between. I wonder if this is the case with all bitter couples who adopt, I wonder if the child is more of a bandage placed on a widening fissure than a new start. Anything important, I heard it from Dennis or would get it through texts at inconvenient times, like Karen knew and was sending them just to spite me, just as I’d gotten into bed to spite her. We’d always done this, played this game. I can’t remember though, when it turned into what it was, a manifestation of the past and expectations we’d both not lived up to.

I think I can hear it again, a shrill squeak here, a sob there, but it could all just be in my head.

I wasn’t sure when I’d drifted off, but I know that a few minutes passed three, I jolt upwards, vision playing tricks like a fun house mirror with the blacks and golds slicing through the blinds. Karen is a few seconds behind me. It hadn’t been a dream.

“Go check on Dennis,” she says, in a sleepy whisper.

“Wasn’t him,” I say back, clearly more alert. “Next door.” Now, if someone had asked me what had woken me up, I might have said a scream or a crash, but the truth was I didn’t know. If Karen hadn’t reacted, I probably would have dismissed it, like I had been doing for months since Lillian and Shawn moved into the apartment next door.

She props her elbows underneath her. I feel the bed jostle as the neighbor’s front door slams following another yell.

Whatever it was, it was over. I lay back down, my eyes going fuzzy, turning into a field of cotton, slight vines of darkness blooming white balls. The image turns into the glowing X rays behind my closed eyes and I choke.

Karen is on me then, seeing that I am still awake, her mouth running while I hold my throat, trying to poke air through the enlarging bristles of cotton in my throat. I wipe tears from my eyes, trying to even my breathing when I catch the tail end of Karen’s sentence.

“…if she’s okay?” Her hand was on my shoulder, my back to her.

I’d talked to Lillian once before. Another time after Shawn had had enough and stormed out. I knocked on her door, voice caring, asking if everything was okay.

Her eyes were dark and the rings around them darker. The light in the hallway was out, had been for a while, and what I looked at was a woman backlit by one or two weak lamp bulbs, the kind of soft glow made by the new earth saving bulbs. I was expecting to see that look, see that she was unknowingly wearing her broken marriage like make up; it caked on so much so that even she wouldn’t recognize herself in a ponds surface at first glance.

I listened to her lie, watched her eyes watch me, trained on my chin or neck, reciting lines she’d probably already told her friends and family. She flinched ever so slightly, it may have just been her eyes jerking lower, but I caught it, every time I moved my weight from one foot to another.

“It ain’t none of our business,” I say to Karen.

Lillian had a seven year old girl, by another man. Looked just like Lillian, brown hair, thin limbs, and that same tired face. I’d made the mistake that night when I was talking to her mom of assuming they were going through the same hell. Karen had insisted I invite them to dinner the next night, so I did.

The look in Karen’s green eyes never changed, always heavy with disappointment. “Just go make sure she’s okay.” It wasn’t a question.

I could hear Lillian crying through the wall. “You go. She don’t even like me. None of ‘em over there do.”

“They wouldn’t know you if they ran over you. They saw you that one time.” She was gesturing in the darkness.

“Guess I got one of them forgetful faces.” I don’t move just as a long sob comes from the other side of the wall. “She ain’t dead.”

Probably be better off dead, I thought, trying to keep the projection of images at a distance. Karen hadn’t figured it out, at least as far as I can tell, and even I may not have known unless I’d done some digging at work. Didn’t have a last name on Shawn, but no one is hard to find anymore.

The night after Lillian and her daughter ate with us, I talked to Chief Hudson, beginning my dive into Shawn’s past. I told Hudson about what I knew and he sent two officers over. The cops returned parroting what Lillian had told them, married couples fight.

Karen got out of bed, picking clothes off the floor. She takes one of his dirty work shirts, and sighs before turning the overhead on, the fan blades recirculating sweltering air. She buttoned it top to bottom, flipping her choppy black hair out of the collar. The oversized shirt made her look younger, forty something, instead of fifty something.

I grab some clothes too, right behind her as she checks on Dennis, still sleeping or pretending to be at least, before walking into the lightless living room. She curses right before the unemptied beer bottle rattles and rolls across the wood floor, echoing in the open space. I’m sure she was expecting me to pick it up, but I don’t. She walks out into the hallway, still no light, while I stand in the doorway, perching like an owl.

Lillian must have thrown herself into Karen’s arms as soon as she opened the door, because her words are muffled and all I can see is that dim light from her doorway haunting the hall. I wonder if that’s what would happen, when I told her about the cancer. Would she be as welcoming, or still glare with those eyes, those you did this to yourself eyes. Then, I thought of Cathy. She may care, you know.

I can’t hear a damn thing, and what I think I do hear is just the echoes from the conversation that night at dinner over the sirens on repeat in the background. Lillian sat there, slumped in the chair just like her daughter, barely any food eaten. Karen was doing what Karen did, putting her nose in other people’s s**t.

“So what caused the fight?” she’d asked.

Lillian’s eyes were on the food and Dennis was watching the little girl, about his age across from him, a question burning on his tongue. They’d beat around the bush for a few more minutes before Dennis asked the girl if she wanted to see his room. After they left, Lillian was flinching again, but this time at Karen’s pronged questions. I could almost hear the thwacks from Shawn badgering her every time her eyes would shoot one way then back.

Lillian smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear, as if about to talk about a happy memory. “He came in, calling me baby girl, kissing my head, then he asked if dinner was ready, smack. Didn’t you pick up anything at the store? Smack. Where is the twenty dollars I gave you? Smack smack. You too tired tonight, or summin’? Smack.  

Karen walked back in, “They’re, uh, spending the night here.” Even in her voice, I can hear her asking herself the same question I was about to blurt. Where we going to put them?

I was angry, at her for always springing things on me, at Lillian for not leaving, at Cathy for being too much like Karen in so many ways, ways I made up to make it seem okay, and mainly at me for fitting myself for a casket when I’d promised so many times to quit. That same promise I made to myself in the parking lot outside the hospital today, right before lighting up again. I never finish anything.

“Fine,” I say, backing off. “I’ll take the floor, you can have the couch.” I take her face, weighed down with concern, and I try. “Don’t worry about it.” At the same time, I can feel the fever burning just beneath, and it becomes even more noticeable on her cool skin. I could just shake her, really grip her, take her under the jaw, no, my hands on her neck as I shook. I’d lived it all in my head when I let go, my chest filling with hot cement.

Lillian comes in first as I wait for her girl. Karen shuts the door and I turn to see the frail thing attached to her mother’s side like lush moss on the north end of a tree. Her eyes are down, her posture rigid. I can smell sex and urine in the air as I take in my lower lip and feel my arthritic fingers sting the harder my fists clinch.

Karen’s voice is kind as she points them to the bedroom, and I can see that, if she didn’t know before, she knew now. I pass them, beating them to the bedroom. I button up a shirt, throw on some mud speckled jeans and a pair of knock off sneakers.

Karen sees me then looks back at them as I walk passed, her turning on her heel in pursuit. She grabs my forearm. “Where the hell are you going?” She says, bewilderment and anger fighting for domination in her voice.

I take my coat off the rack, remembering the storm clouds I’d seen in the distance after I dropped Cathy off. We were in the middle of hurricane season, but along the coast, there was always a chance of rain. “I can’t.” I show her my knurled hands. “I can’t be here.”

I didn’t wait for the Fine! Go! Look that I knew was coming. Maybe that’s where we’d gone wrong, I thought before closing the front door behind me. Neither one of us were chasers.

The car shakes to life like a cat shaking off a wet coat, and I drive until I hit the interstate. The streetlights guide me along the main drag, passed the castles of rusting steel out along the gulf water. The clouds hang low towards the south making it look like the refinery is still pumping exhaust into the summer air. I think about the smoke, how it stained the sky and wonder when they opened me up, if my lungs would sing that same violet melody as the afternoon sky.

 I take the second exit off I-90 and the landscape shifts to swamp, the ground broken by still lucid liquid hidden under water lettuce and wild marsh buds, moss coating the regions further out, climbing up the bone trees. Orchids dangle from outreaching limbs from trees flanking the narrow road heading north, the kudzu encasing the bark like a snake would entangle a mouse before swallowing it whole. Cat tails lick the side of my car as I go, the ones so tall that they lean out into the road like the thumb of a hitchhiker among the cypress knees that go unseen by the headlights.

Even when I was boy, the town was a forest, each tree keeping to itself, letting its roots sink deeper into the soil. What we saw were the trees, but the secrets people had, the things that tied them to the land were the lies rooting them to the earth, but like in nature, sometimes roots accidentally intertwine.

Moon Valley wasn’t far; its beginning marked by a Gulfin’ Go gas station, no longer open, an unintended monument to the recession. The green flaking sign read 3.87 Unleaded and 4.66 Diesel. The rest were missing a number or had been blown away all together.

            I think about turning around, more than a few times, and the closer I get, the more I am looking for a place to turn around. Excuses came at every one. I was going too fast to stop in time, maybe there is a better one up ahead, I’ve come all this way, too late to puss out. The sirens were wailing during the whole drive in my head.

            I’d never been to Larkins Bar outside of uniform. Even at night, under the dimly pulsing street lamp and flashing neon’s, the boarded up cabin looked wet and greasy, its exterior giving off a shine, like a dog’s eyes caught in a camera’s flash. I park closest to the door, next to a rust colored pickup opposite the three bikes slanted by the side of the building. The place was alive, considering it was four a.m.

            I count six heads when I walk in the door, taking in the atmospheric aroma of tobacco and stale beer. The place is passed its expiration date by about two decades. The three men standing away from the bar wear dark tribal that slithers from their short sleeves, their heads shaved, and moustaches grey. The one woman is smoking by the pool table, its green felt rippled and torn, and above her drawn on eyebrows, blue mascara, and tall hair is a cloud, like a thought bubble wavering in place.

            My shoes sound like boots on the hollow floor as I take the center stool, one stool separating me from a man to my left. The bartender and owner, Louise Larkin, gives me a look across the bar and I present the friendliest smile I can. It wasn’t my fault that his place fell on the wrong side of the Keaton County Line and police were constantly being dispatched for this or that because he was a few inches shy a more lenient rule. Things had quieted down though, since he’d turned sixty last year. Guess the wise finally caught up to the age.

            “J.W. please,” I say. Louise takes a few more seconds to inspect the glass that he’s cleaning and then a few more to eye me, but I make sure he understands that I’m not on duty. He sets the stocky glass in front of me. The man next to me must have thought he was being sneaky, eyeing me from the corner of his whites, but he must be too sloshed and is unable to keep his glares on the quiet.

            I turn my head towards him, give him a dip of the invisible hat, then face front again, looking at the one shelf, unlit, at the back.

            The man next to me is hunching over the bar, his jean jacket collar bunching up on his neck. He has short black hair in the front and the beginnings of a wavy mullet folding around the denim collar. He is young, at least to me. Looked younger now that he was up close.

            I look at him again, a goofy grin flashing, “Didn’t think there’d be many people here. Almost morning.”

            Larkin keeps the place open all night sometimes, illegally, and I knew that he knew that. It was evident in the way he kept eyeing me from every position, untrusting.

            The man arches his shoulders. His glass is empty, for the six or seventh time most likely but he didn’t seem to be pining for more.

            “What do you think makes a man want to drink at four in the morning?” I ask him, turning in my stool, glass in hand.

            “Wrong guy to ask, man.”

            I know it is a lie. “Yeah, me too. Lot better than lying awake at night though, you know, thinking.”

            The man turns, his eyes swimming like a Basset Hound’s. “Piss off.”

              One thing, above all else, I knew about Shawn Barrow, was that he was never sober. His piss scent lingered in the hallway long after he’d go into his apartment and long after he stormed out. He was all the things people thought of when they thought of an alcoholic. After I’d found out that Lillian covered for him when the two officers confronted her, I continued digging. There was a record, no shock to me, and it was much shorter than I had expected. I dismissed the pre-twenties misdemeanors and read the rest off; Two counts of driving with suspension, one count of battery, a few small time drug charges, and one count of child molestation a few years back. I harkened back to the look on the little girls face and knew then. Since then, I’d lie awake at night, straining to hear, wanting to hear something, but instead, the sirens plagued my thoughts.

            I drink most of what is in my glass, leaving a bit of amber liquid at the bottom and placing it on the chipped and scratched bar. I need a cigarette. I can feel the manifestation of smoke clawing at my throat, my breath shortening. “I didn’t have a reason, before.” I lean over, placing my elbows on my legs. “But, I just got too much on my mind and thinking ain’t gunna solve nothing.” I reach into my breast pocket, crinkling the plastic around the red Camel box. I open it, and toss it next to my glass, making a good show of it. I’d tossed the paper sticks one by one on my way here. I’d told myself that it was for this reason, but in a way it was a relief. “I’m out, mind if I bum one?”

            Shawn rolls his eyes, “Man, go get one from one of them.” He jutts his arm angrily at the people playing pool.

            “Oh, come on, man,” I mimic his cool tone, giving my own slur at the end. “I see you got a pack.” That was another thing I knew about Shawn. He always had a pack, because he always had one in his mouth and one tucked behind his ear, ready to load the next round. Someone who smokes that much always had a stash, always bought their own because they couldn’t just depend on the generosity of other. I would know. “Man, give me a smoke and I’ll go. Sound fair?”

            Shawn isn’t amused by the tactic but takes no time in giving in, letting out a long f**k me sigh.

            He hands me a Marlboro that I have no intention of smoking. I reach out to take it and say, “Gotta enjoy ‘em while I still can.” I liberate the white stick. “Lung Cancer.” I say it and to my surprise it brings no relief. If anything it makes the anvil in my chest heavier. Everything about it was right. It was the truth. How often had I gotten to tell the truth? I lied. I lied to Karen. I lied to Dennis. I lied to Hudson. I lied to Cathy. But I didn’t lie to Shawn.

            All I got was a muffled, “I hear ya,” from him before I put the money on the counter and walk out the front door.

            I’d followed him here, not once but twice after I’d read his sheet. I’d drop Cathy off and sit at the edge of the interstate in my squad car, checking every vehicle for that brown pick up. I’d followed him close, daring him to do something, begging for him to give me a reason to pull him over but he was always careful until he turned into Larkin’s lot.

            I didn’t have to wait long. Not as long as I thought. Twenty minutes later, Shawn walks right passed as I stand next to the door, cigarette balancing between my lips.

            Shawn’s left foot drags a bit behind him as he stammers into the gravel lot. I let the cigarette drop and walk up behind him, taking long surefooted strides before shoving him with all my weight. I might as well have pushed over a child, it was so easy.

            He isn’t too far gone to catch himself with his forearms though, his body kicking up dirt. He doesn’t move at first, but then gets to his knees. I leave a footprint on the back of his jacket when I kick him back down.

He gets to go home, I thought. Back to what he had. I wondered what he’d do when he got back and they weren’t there.

            In my time standing in the dew dotted morning air while I was waiting, I thought about how easy it might be to just run him off the road on the way back, send him in to the marsh. I didn’t know if I’d stay though; stay to listen to his enclosed screaming or the final GLUG of the marsh. Drowning would be fitting. There would be no questions. God knows by the time they found him, my scent would be far too gone in the wind. I couldn’t be sure if men, men like me, looked for guys like this.

            Shawn makes it to his feet, turning clumsily on flamingo thin legs, each bowing out. He is covered in khaki dirt from his knees to his chin. I hear the waft of air and whipping fabric pass me, his fist coming nowhere close to hitting its mark. His boots grind against the loose rocks as he steers back around, fists raised. He left himself open. I throw an elbow into his side, leading with the point and push him back. His defense came when he whiffed again and I caught him in the jaw, clean. All he did was stagger. Shawn is hiding behind a wall of numb millings and drunken skin. I am already winded when he comes again. This time he stops right in front of me, throwing two quick jabs as if the blow to his jaw sobered him up a bit. I cough and take myself in my own embrace, feeling the pain ripple on my old tight skin. He is on me like a junkyard hound, his body close, his arms angled, and his punches coming in chaotic waves along my arms trying to cover the length of my chest and stomach. His boot comes down on the back of my knee, taking me down. I can’t quit coughing, the snow in my lungs being ruffled into a Detroit blizzard. The steel toes of his boots and his narrow knees are aiming for my head as I roll to my left. I catch one of his legs, right around the thigh, after his knee catches me in the nose and I begin rolling like an alligator. Blood shines in the lighting, it dripping from my face and turning into ink on Shawn’s jeans as I crawl up his horizontal body, trying to contain his thrashing kicks and withstand his boney knuckles.

            I pull at what I can, his jacket, his shirt collar, raking at what skin I can grab on my ascent until I find his throat. I make a fist and raise it as high as I can before bringing it down like a gavel, passing judgment, on his windpipe. He joins my coughing fit, his hands now clawing around where I’d hit him. His eyes are blood shot. I rise up, sitting on his chest, him looking at me, eyes trembling. The first blow feels like I miss and hit the rocks. The second lands, I know because his head turns sideways. I think about hitting him again but doubt he can stay conscious if I do and I resist the urge to take his skull in my hands and bash it into the gravel until his blood runs deep into the dirt, making little islands out of the taller rocks.

            Instead, I scoot forward and place my knee on his hands which cover his throat. His eyes widen to a wild, unnatural size.

I can see it. He doesn’t know why I am doing this. He doesn’t know who I was. He thought that this was a random act, that this wasn’t him accounting for what he’d done, which made me press my knee down harder.

            “You listening?” I ask, head cocking to the side, iron flavoring my breath. The man’s eyes stay on the stars. “Are you listening?” He looks at me, trying to nod but is too busy trying not to choke. I feel as if my throat is coated with gravel dust, but my words travel through. “I know what you did to that little girl.” His eyes don’t change.

            “You’re going to leave tonight, you hear me? Or I’ll run you off into the marsh or strand you in the bayou. Either way, nobody’s goin’ come looking for you.” I mean every word, and he looks as if he knows that. I don’t know how I sounded so convincing, considering that I feel like I’ve been trampled by a horse, a stampede even. I slowly let myself off of him, watching for any backlash but he scampers away, like a roach in the light, back to his truck, his lip busted and eyes swollen. I’d have to answer for this, I thought as I look at the pre-dawn sky but I still was hoping that he was drunk enough to drive himself into the swamp or do everyone a favor and drive full speed into a light pole. I wait until his taillights are gone before standing up, feeling the muscles stiffen and ache.

            I head back to the car, but stop by the door and pick up the Marlboro. I sit in the car for a while, plugging my nose and dabbing at my face in the rearview. I retrieve my red lighter from the glove compartment and let the flame lick the sticks papery end until it begins to curl and turn the same early morning orange as the sky.

            I’d have to take a sick day, I think. The thought made me smile as I pull back onto the road. Normal thoughts about normal things would be something I’d still take for granted, but not right now because it was the last one I thought about on the way home. I think about the refinery coming on in the distance, a humid haze lingering. I think about Cathy and Karen. I think about Carpenter, and myself. All of us, too dependent on borrowed time.

                                      

Author's Note

I'd love comments and critiques of Carpenter, thanks for reading!