Wife, child gone, phone-tree confirmation, 1-800-FAM-GONE. I shall eat this pork chop and wine. Breakfast of chop and wine, blue wine pink chop, sweep the floor, clean house. Dust-free environment in which to begin breathing. Down. Wine and chop. Chop. Wine. Purple.<\/p>\n
I have some credit in the women bank, but not in the child bank. Never heard of the child bank. There is no solace for the lost child. There is solace for the lost woman. There are lost more women. You eat chop, call woman, sweep floor. Rooms full of bears and books cannot be swept. Remain in public open spaces, sweeping light dust, not heavy artifacts, nothing so heavy as the stuffed animal just now. Leave them be. Maybe forever. Put on apron and sing. Someone\u2019s in the kitchen with Dinah, someone\u2019s in the kitchen I know, ho, ho, and it\u2019s you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
REPENT<\/p>\n
FINAL<\/p>\n
WARNING<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A road sign like this, invariably nailed to a\u00a0pine<\/em>\u00a0tree, high and aslant, you never pay more heed to than it takes to chuckle.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n WINE<\/p>\n FINAL<\/p>\n CHOP<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am in recovery. From what is not precisely known. From life, mostly, about covers it. Everything<\/em>\u00a0is dependence and abuse or denial of same. Everything<\/em>\u00a0is a cover for something. Booze covers for your boring, lack-of-inner-resource self (mothers accuse you of that lack, and you may hate your mother according to her being wrong or, usually, right, but mine never so accused, and I hate her anyway, or at least a girlfriend says I do, a girlfriend of whom I may not be altogether fond herself). Recovery from the \u201cdiscovery\u201d which every moment in your existence past about age five has been pointing to, but for which you had not properly sat the jury so managed not to notice, that you are an ass. I am in recovery from that revelation. My dung heart reels. I stupe. Ass wipes nose, has sniffles. Regroups. Wine, chop. Floor, clean. Dust. Sun. Phone. Who?<\/p>\n A clean room in an unlit place. A green breeze and salt. Time. Time ticking, grasshoppers. Dry-cured bacon and big-time blues. Mean to dance, mean to call a\u00a0girl<\/em>. Mean to affect the effect of getting my effects in order. Mean to dizz out.<\/p>\n I want a girl impervious to harm, petty or grand. An industrial model disguised for home use. For the contractor masquerading as home owner.<\/p>\n A day at the dump to provide some distraction. I have come with Driggers to the dump. Driggers has been to the barbershop and smells like a woman and is as pretty and is very proud of his grooming and is smacking gum and doing okay until he reports, \u201cFlashback.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFlashback of what?\u201d The way he\u2019s all pretty-boyed and dancing from goner appliance to reparable appliance, stopping to look at girlie magazines blowing in the flyblown breeze, I expect him to say, \u201cPussy.\u201d<\/p>\n He says, \u201cVietnam.\u201d He stands where he is with a truly vacant, sick look on his erstwhile smiling face. Much of life, for me, resides in moments in which you might not too absurdly use \u201cerstwhile,\u201d but Driggers is not so idle or full of shit.<\/p>\n What around us\u2014gales of seagulls preying on garbage, the predominate strains of which are these torn-up\u00a0Penthouses<\/em>, and inexplicable case lots of Skoal\u2014could remind him of Vietnam?<\/p>\n \u201cVietnam? What the fuck out here is like Viet\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat bulldozer.\u201d<\/p>\n For the first time in my dodger life I see the horror, the horror. The bulldozer is an anemic yellow in hot white light and diesel pestilence moving tons of waste with flies on it. I don\u2019t want to know more. This is frightening in a way that Tales of Charlie are not: or pungee sticks, or dried ears, or tunnels, or the saps who went being better than those that did not.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to stop drinking, Driggers, but it doesn\u2019t have to be today. Let\u2019s go.\u201d He is in the truck, white.<\/p>\n It starts.<\/p>\n I want to love but know I never will. Or is it that I want to be loved and know that that, too, I can prevent? Or must prevent? I can locate the\u00a0object<\/em>, it is in the\u00a0method<\/em>\u00a0I fall down. Do not quite have the hang of it. This is a difficult idea to get your brain on, in the truck with Driggers, who is calmed into an earthly earthy mania. You could not hold the idea in your head that you did not quite get the hang of, say, eating. On the face of it, the idea is absurd: who does not get the hang of eating? But once you look at it\u2014bologna, Miracle Whip, tofu, \u201ccheese food product,\u201d the diet industry, the\u00a0food<\/em>\u00a0industry, for that matter\u2014it is tenable that many people do not have the hang of eating. So how difficult the notion they do not know how to love? Simple idea, really. We are drunk and do not have the hang of drinking.<\/p>\n Driggers will get so drunk tonight I will have to prevent him from killing someone. Driggers has the hang of killing. He is now most agreeably sampling the tins of Skoal I pressed him to take. There were so many of them, with sales literature and still in case boxes, looking not only unopened but otherwise unharmed, that we know something is wrong with them. But short of cyanide injection\u2014and why would a killer put his killer Skoal\u00a0in the dump<\/em>?\u2014we can\u2019t figure what is wrong with them. Driggers is tentatively tasting multiple tins, sampling flavors he has never bought. He\u2019s getting happy. Comparatively. Tonight that \u2019dozer and that Nam will hover about the pool table, and I will have my work cut out for me. Those of us who did not go can yet be Good Boys.<\/p>\n Driggers and I matriculate smoothly from the dump to the bar, a good one about like the dump, no seagulls allowed. Actually a species of seagull is allowed. It sits at the bar from 11 a.m. on, and at about 7 p.m. starts flying from man to man. And at about 10 that night Driggers and I do the Act. He beats everybody in the place once on the pool table and circles around to the first boy he beat and says to him, \u201cRack \u2019em up, futhermucker,\u201d prompted by the legend on the boy\u2019s T-shirt, (FUTHERMUCKER, with some kind of bug-eyed Big Daddy Roth cartoon). Driggers is a genius; he calculates this \u201cinnocent\u201d remark of his to enrage the boy, it does, and the boy has the cue ball and draws back to throw it and Driggers has him in a headlock before I can move. Driggers pops him with little uppercuts with the cue ball in the boy\u2019s very hand as I manage to wedge him off, which he allows me to do.<\/p>\n \u201cButton your lip, button your coat, let\u2019s go out dancing,\u201d I say, and he says, \u201cWhat the fuck you talking about?\u201d and I say, \u201cMick Jagger,\u201d and he says, \u201cI\u2019m just playing pool,\u201d smiling the while at the boy and looking at him so intensely the boy stops in his selection of a pool cue and decides not to advance and I buttfuck-waltz Driggers, smiling at everyone, out the door. No one ever advances on Driggers once he is restrained and they see his look, with which he\u00a0invites<\/em>\u00a0them to advance on him, pinned. I\u2019d let him go if anyone ever came on, but they don\u2019t. Nor does anyone ever bother me, handler of this dog they do not want back on the ground. This is good, because I am a pussy. Driggers is\u2026 well, Driggers\u00a0went<\/em>.<\/p>\n Outside, to conclude the fair day, I say, \u201cDriggers, my wife and child have decamped.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI heard about that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMake you a better man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMake you a better man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs that all you got to say?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n And it was. And it was not a bad thing to have said, after I got through formal umbrage, which I thought obligatory. Formal umbrage (and other things) was going to have to go.<\/p>\n \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t use words like\u00a0decamped<\/em>, maybe people stick around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs that right?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow about\u00a0erstwhile<\/em>? As in my erstwhile boon companion so totally fucked up from, he says, Vietnam that if he shoots pool someone got to die? Bulldozers erstwhile in\u00a0the Nam<\/em>\u2014that is so cool, when you guys say that, the demon<\/em>strative\u2014make him askeert today of bulldozers pushing people\u2019s Pampers around?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGo ahead, get it out of your system.\u201d<\/p>\n We both start laughing. When I drop him off he says again, \u201cMake you a better man,\u201d and slams the truck door. Driggers slams things as a matter of course. Never\u00a0put<\/em>\u00a0what you can throw. It\u2019s his m\u00e9tier. I put. I tiptoe, whisper. People leave me. Women slide off like snakes. You\u2019d find Driggers on the floor wrapped up in about a thirty-foot anaconda, calling for his hunting knife, having fun. \u201cShe\u2019s gone be leaving,\u201d he\u2019d say, \u201cbut we have to\u00a0talk<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n I survey the quiet, my clean floors, still clean. The phone rings.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat did you mean, \u2018Mick Jagger\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe wrote that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWrote what?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cButton your lip, button your coat, let\u2019s go dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0this shit?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cActually, for all I know, Ron Wood or Keith Richards\u2014I don\u2019t know\u00a0who<\/em>\u00a0wrote it. Jagger sang it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAmazing. Bye.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBye.\u201d<\/p>\n I won\u2019t be needing to work so much, and the music can be louder. The balanced-diet shit is out, and NPR. Under every rock is something good if you can scrape off the mold and if the grubs don\u2019t scare you into dropping the rock and refusing to move and groove into the New. Skylights may be in order, light shows. Goddamn overhead projector and Jell-O and oil and hippie chicks. The problem is hippie chicks are younger than my daughter. I need they mommas. They mommas got some sense. Everyone has sense, that is basically the problem I face. I am either behind or too far ahead\u2014so far ahead I bid to lap them. I therefore\u00a0look<\/em>\u00a0behind. I\u2019m through with these\u00a0sense<\/em>\u00a0fuckers. I\u2019ll just run through, forget the baton shit.<\/p>\n New Outgoing Message: Hello, you\u2019ve reached trouble. If you make sense, I won\u2019t call you back. If it makes sense to call you back, I won\u2019t. If this makes sense to you, you have the right number. I do not listen to the messages on this machine. As near as I can tell, these machines make no sense. You\u2019ve called me, uninvited, I am not interested in you or your business; if you are interested in mine, here, take this, my best shot: My floors are clean. And they will remain so.<\/p>\n A bird comes into the house, or\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0in the house. Won\u2019t listen to reason, of course. Runs from me. Has been in the house. I did not see it come in. It may have\u00a0just<\/em>\u00a0come in, though. I can\u2019t say. I can\u2019t say a lot of what I am tempted to say, all day. None of us can. I aim to clear some of this up, this presumption, inaccuracy, outright fallacy that governs our days. Clear it all up. Why not. Some new light, new music. Most of the furniture is hers and is designed<\/em>\u00a0to burn. Teddy bears on top, beware the burning teddy-bear draft, the noxious gas of child-gone toys going, too.<\/p>\n Call Driggers. \u201cDriggers, do not get downwind of the burning bear. You can\u00a0sit<\/em>\u00a0on the goddamn burning sofa, though.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShit, I know that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou do?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLearned \u2019at first thing in the Nam.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou fucker.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou take it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRoger.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWilco.\u201d<\/p>\n “I want a girl impervious to harm, petty or grand. An industrial model disguised for home use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[139,141,138,140,142],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-abandonment","tag-bar-fights","tag-dumps","tag-love","tag-vietnam","writer-padgett-powell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17538,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/17538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More new fiction
\nfrom\u00a0Padgett Powell in
\n BULL No. 1<\/a><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"