Punch Line: Stories, New & Selected

By B. D. Love

B. D. Love writes eloquently of troubled lives and troubled loves, capturing as well as anyone writing today the ways in which we both crave and fear intimacy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781595948564

Book preview

Punch Line

stories, new & selected

B. D. Love

WingSpan Press

Copyright © 2014 by B. D. Love

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

without written permission of the author,

except for brief quotations used in reviews and critiques.

Printed in the United States of America

Published by WingSpan Press, Livermore, CA

www.wingspanpress.com

The WingSpan name, logo and colophon

are the trademarks of WingSpan Publishing.

First Edition 2014

ISBN: 978-1-59594-518-1 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978-1-59594-856-4 (ebk.)

Author’s Preface

The nineteen stories here first appeared in literary journals over the same number of years. They were composed or revised in many locales, including Alicante, Spain; Syracuse, New York; Dallas, Texas; Falls Church, Virginia; Taos, New Mexico; and of course Los Angeles, California, down by the River. Tecumseh, Michigan, though, was the starting point for the journey, the first step of the ten thousand.

Many people were involved in the progress of this collection, some of whom inspired pity and sorrow, some of whom inspired love and a hope for redemption, and some of whom inspired mainly indignation and anger which is, as John Lydon sang, an energy. To various degrees and with varying intent, this book is dedicated to them all.

They know who they are.

B.D. Love

Los Angeles, California

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following publications who took the chance: The MacGuffin, Red Dress for Rana; Pike Creek Review, The Lost Girl; The Literary Review, Naturalization; Talking River Review, Man Out of Time; Slipstream, The Ransom; New Orleans Review, The Modest Proposal; River Oak Review, Dim Sum for Two; Other Voices, Punch Line; Kingfisher, A Regular; Manoa, The Professor and the B-Girl; The Widener Review and River City, Betrayed by Johnny Gomez; Willow Springs, Shoes for the Dead; Crosscurrents, Bills; Oxford Magazine, SWM, 31; Turnstile, The Miracle; Fine Madness, Sweethearts Vanish in Tunnel of Love; Palo Alto Review, Quality Control; Slipstream, The Ransom.

Stories

The Miracle

Betrayed by Johnny Gomez

Quality Control

SWM, 31

The Western End of the Known World

Bills

Shoes for the Dead

Dim Sum for Two

Red Dress for Rana

The Modest Proposal

The Lost Girl

A Man Out of Time

Snakes

Naturalization

The Ransom

A Regular

Sweethearts Vanish in Tunnel of Love

The Professor and the B-Girl (a fable)

Punch Line

The Miracle

The ride to the chapel took forever. There were Jason, the girls—Ellen and me—and Papa riding facing each other in the back of a car that was so big and so dark that it was like a cavern on wheels. Or at least that’s how it seemed that afternoon. Papa was nervous about letting another man drive, I could tell, though of course he never said anything. That was Papa’s way. He just sat there still as a fence post, staring out the window at the snow, which was coming down in thick wet flakes the size of walnuts.

That’s what I remember most about the drive: the snow, the dark car, the perfume-sweet smell of the funeral director. He was perfectly quiet—solemn, I guess the word is—though he’d never met Mama, and could never even guess how bad it felt losing her to cancer the day after Thanksgiving. But he was doing his job. There’s no shame in that.

At the chapel, it was just us family and a couple of the closer relatives. Ellen and Jason looked like angels with their round faces, their bright blue eyes, their hair—like mine was once—the color of late-August wheat. Papa wore his one suit. Mama never could make it so that it seemed to fit.

Father Mack, the same priest who’d married Mama and Papa and baptized each of us three kids, said a few words about passing from one life to a better one. Ellen cried. Jason, little as he was, didn’t fidget much, though I don’t guess he really understood what was happening. He was a good boy. As for me, I was pretty cried out by then, and that was all right, since being the oldest I figured I ought to set an example. Papa was himself all the way through. When Father Mack was finished, we went up one by one and said our last goodbyes. Papa lingered the longest.

It was already starting to get dark when we got home. I set about to heating up some of the leftover turkey, and Papa went off to the bedroom, saying he had to get some things straight. The kids sat at the table—pretty quiet at first, watching me slice away at the bird—but they were edgy. A lot of quiet is tough on kids. Soon enough they were at each other, poking and picking, saying this one did this and that one that, and I just got fed up. I didn’t think it would hurt, so I sent them off to the living room to watch television until supper.

It wasn’t a minute before Ellen started yelling—shrieking, really—and Papa came rushing through one door just as Jason toddled in through the other.

Mama, he said. It’s Mama. It’s Mama.

I followed Papa into the living room. Ellen was standing there, covering her mouth and trying not to scream anymore. She was shaking like a leaf and staring wide-eyed at the TV screen. Then Papa and I understood what Jason had said. There was Mama—or somebody that looked just like her—right there on TV.

Papa? I whispered.

He hushed me. I’ve never seen Papa scared—not when the shotgun went off and took a half his hand, not when the pack of wild dogs came at him down at the barn. He wasn’t the type to scare. But I don’t know what else you’d call the look in his eyes as he stared at the television set. He moved closer, squinting, putting his good hand close to the screen and then pulling it away suddenly, as if a spark was going to come leaping out and strike him dead.

Finally, he did touch the screen, and moved his fingers in a wide circle across the glass, feeling.

Rita?

Mama—or the likeness of Mama—didn’t answer. In fact, she wasn’t moving at all. It could have been a photograph there on the screen. Mama was lying down, it looked like, with her head on a pillow. Her hair was loose, the way she wore it when she slept. She looked like she was sleeping, too—her eyes were closed, and there was a smile on her lips. It wasn’t a big toothy grin or anything, just a kind of peaceful, pleasant-dream smile. It was kind of like the one she’d have when she rubbed Papa’s back with ointment after he’d been out milking all day.

Rita? Papa asked again.

Mama didn’t say a word.

Ellen was holding little Jason in front of her, and the shaking had pretty much stopped.

Alison, she whispered to me. What is it, Alison? What’s happening?

The first words came out of my mouth before I could even think about them:

It’s a trick. Somebody’s playing a trick.

No, Papa said, very soft, very low. It ain’t a trick. It ain’t nothing like that. It’s —

He ran his fingertips across the screen.

It’s a miracle.

Now I didn’t know much about miracles, but I was nearly willing to take Papa’s word for it that what was there on the TV was what he said it was. Papa wasn’t exactly the most religious man in the county. Still, the thing bothered me. What if it was a trick? What if somebody in the funeral home had taken Mama’s body and put a camera on it, and then was sending out a picture, just to be mean?

As soon as I could slip away, I got on the telephone and called my friend Dana, who lives just a half mile up the road, and asked her to go turn on channel twelve.

There’s nothing on channel twelve, she said.

Just check, Dana. Please?

Nope, she said when she got back. There’s nothing on channel twelve.

When I went back to the living room, Papa had already cleared the top of the set and covered it with a piece of green felt. There were two candles, the kind we save for the power blackouts, at either end, and in the middle a small bouquet of flowers that one of the neighbors had sent. Papa sat at the edge of the sofa, waiting for something to happen. Ellen and Jason had sneaked off to their room.

One thing I have to say about Papa: Throughout the months that followed, regardless of how much time he put in front of that television, never once did he shirk his duties. He was up at four, on the dot, and back from the barn at noon. He’d have his lunch, when he ate, sitting in front of the TV, and then he’d be off again to do the afternoon chores. That’s the way it went: seven days a week, never failing. Sometimes he wouldn’t get done until ten, eleven o’clock, and he’d come dragging in exhausted, shower up, and take his place in front of the set once more. From the bedroom I could see him sitting there, waiting in the little grotto the silver-blue light carved out of the darkness. That’s where he’d be at four the next morning when the alarm went off.

The candles went on burning, and the flowers were always fresh.

We had the understanding in the family—Papa never ordered us and never had to—that the television was to be kept on twenty four hours a day, and never switched from channel twelve. Neither were we to tell a soul about the miracle just in case some nosy reporter would come sniffing around and write up a story that would make Mama’s appearance sound cheap and phony, like something you read about in the checkout line at the market while you’re waiting to be rung up. In fact, we weren’t allowed to have anyone over to the house at all. It never had been any secret that Papa wasn’t too fond of company, maybe because he didn’t have any family but us, and after a couple of sharp words Mama’s people pretty much left us alone, as if we’d been quarantined for the fever or something.

For a long time, through Christmas—which wasn’t much of one—New Years, and on into February, even, nobody put up a fuss. Of course, the newness kind of wore off. Jason and Ellen would run through the living room after breakfast hurrying to catch the school bus and call over their shoulders:

Bye, Mama!

They always said hello, too, when they got home at five, though Mama never answered back. For a while I tried to make them spend some time in front of the set each night. I started with an hour, let it fall off to a half, then a quarter, and finally I let them go straight to their room to play games and draw with their crayons. Toward the end, I even had to remind them to say good night.

It was harder for me. After a time, I couldn’t look at the TV anymore. When I walked past it, I’d be sure to look away, toward anything. It seemed kind of said, and worse yet, kind of unnatural, keeping Mama’s picture there like that. It seemed to me then as it does today that the way things are set up, people when they die are supposed to go back to the earth. But Mama hadn’t changed a bit. She still looked exactly the same way she had when the miracle first started. Not that I wanted to watch her come undone right there on television, of course, but it sure didn’t seem right that she should sleep through Eternity looking like a figure in a wax museum, either.

Of all of us, though, Papa seemed to be taking the miracle the worst. It’s a strange thing, seeing a man age right before your eyes. It wasn’t overnight that Papa’s hair went silver, but it was pretty close to that. The lines, too, especially around his eyes, started deepening, and the creases in his forehead got thick as tractor tracks. The strain, I guess, was wearing on him. He started getting testy, too. The sound of the kids laughing in their room, the way kids do when they stay up late and try not to get caught, one time set Papa into a rage. He flew through the house like a big hawk, slamming the door open with his fist and shouting in a voice I didn’t know he had in him. It must have scared the kids white.

There were other things about Papa, too. It’s hard to describe. I’d watch him come walking back to the house at night, breathing steam like one of the animals, kicking up the snow, and there was something in the way he moved that made it seem as if he’d gained an awful lot of weight, when in fact he’d probably lost twenty pounds since the miracle started. It was like gravity was pulling on him more than on the rest of us, and it showed in his shoulders, especially. They strained toward the ground like a couple of tree limbs full of wet snow. He’d come trudging toward the house, trailing his shadow like an old-fashioned plow, or a ball and chain. It broke my heart to see him that way, but there was nothing I could do. There was never any talking to him.

The days, anyway, were getting lighter. Spring was coming. I could feel it in the air and see it in the slant of the sun. It was taking the kids hard—they were all itching to run out without their coats and mittens, though it wasn’t so warm yet that they wouldn’t catch something. There were other changes, too.

It was late March, a couple weeks before the first real thaw, when Ellen first asked me if she could put something else on the television.

There’s a rule in this house, I said.

But Alison!

And a rule is a rule.

But, but.

And what if you did and something happened—what if Mama disappeared for good?

I was about to get my answer to that. The sound of a cartoon came sailing across the air into the kitchen. I found Jason sprawled across the couch, watching Wile E. Coyote chase the Road Runner across the desert.

Jason!

I was more than a little afraid to switch channels, but I did, and there was Mama, silent and still as always, lying there smiling. Well, I thought, as long as Papa never finds out, there’s no harm in letting the kids have a little fun.

Things went along fine for a month. The kids would watch their shows, and I’d keep an eye out the window, just in case Papa came back early from the barn, which he never had and never did. There was a lot to look at out that window, and I never got bored. Spring was coming on full blast now. The trees were bursting green all over the place—a green so bright and new you nearly had to squint at it. And the clouds, those big ones the color of tarnished silver, had broken up and given way to cottony swirls and broad patches of blue. The birds were chirping and nesting. And, like a lot of girls, I guess, I was kind of caught up in the fever, too.

Johnny Eagleton was a year younger than me, fifteen, but he was tall and good-looking and very sweet. It didn’t bother him, or so he said, that the other boys gave him a ribbing for walking me up the road to the house after school. I’ll bet it did, but he wouldn’t admit it. He was sturdy as an oak, inside and out, and something about his quiet ways made me feel all warm inside. Maybe that’s what some people call love. I really never thought of it that way. We started off talking on the way home, and then after a time that wasn’t enough, so I told him it was all right to call on the telephone, as long as it wasn’t too late. We had a lot of talks, Johnny Eagleton and me. I got so I kind of expected his calls. I also got so I started forgetting to keep watch for Papa.

What had to happen finally did. I was on the phone, talking about something important, like the weather, or some silly music group, when the back door clicked and opened. I didn’t think much about it. Then I did. I screamed and dropped the phone and went running into the living room, but it was too late. Papa had got there first. He’d caught Ellen and Jason having a picnic, sort of, in front of the television. The Three Stooges were on—beating on each other in the way they did.

The kids had bolted to their feet and stood frozen. They looked terrified. Papa’s eyes blazed, and when he turned to glare at me, their fire scorched me down to the bone. He shook. He shuddered. He seemed big as a mountain. He looked down at the kids and bit his lip. Then he took two hard steps toward me a raised his hand over his head. He held it there, waiting, I guess, for his anger to build up enough for him to go ahead and hit me. It kept building. I felt the tears well up, but I didn’t turn away or try to cover my face. I was wrong, I knew it, and I was the oldest.

Papa never did hit me. After a time, the anger seeped out of him. He put down his fist and walked off into the bedroom. I sent the kids to bed.

Papa? I called through the door.

There was nothing.

Papa?

The door opened and Papa stepped out. He put his hand on my shoulder. I could feel his eyes again, but this time they weren’t burning with rage. He took a little of my hair in his hand and rolled it between his fingers as if he was testing soil, or gauging the corn by its silk.

Daughter, was all he said.

I followed him through the kitchen and out the door. We walked, me a few steps behind, straight to the shed, where Papa got a spade.

There was a place Mama had always liked. It was out back, a little hill that rose up right in the middle of the field and couldn’t be plowed. In the summer it would be covered with fine grass and shaded by a tall oak. I remember Mama spreading a checkered cloth and laying out the sandwiches and the apples and pouring us each cups of cold, sweet juice.

I guess I don’t have to tell you what Papa had chosen that place for. When he was done, I followed him back to the house. The kids had turned the channel back to twelve.

Papa didn’t look all that long at Mama, but he did bend down and kiss the screen just before he pulled out the plug and carried the set off.

When he got back he washed, and then he went off again, this time in the car. He came home a little after dark. There was a television set under his arm—not a brand-new one, but it was color. He set it on the stand and waited for it to warm up.

The kids came out of their room at the sound of the Evening News. Somebody was holding somebody hostage. Then there was the economy, bad for the working man, same as always.

Papa hesitated, pretending to be interested. Then he looked at each of us—first at Jason, then at Ellen and finally at me. I don’t think he was looking at us ourselves, though, so much as at the likeness and the memory.

We all held our breath as he turned the dial—station to station, click by click, the long way round to channel twelve.

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, there it was: not nothing, but not a picture, either. The screen was filled with snow—all these wonder flakes, big as walnuts and white as could be.

Betrayed by Johnny Gomez

Most of the words in my life-long arsenal of obscenities I learned from Johnny Gomez. He and I were partners during the 4th grade. We drifted together through no natural inclination; rather, it was a matter of necessity. We were both fat, outcast, disrespectful of authority and a good way smarter than the Dominican nuns who taught us. As one of those loveless brides of Jesus once said, Johnny and I deserved each other.

To amuse ourselves during the long hours of being read at, over, under but never to, we developed a game. It involved no skill, no cleverness, but a great deal of honor. We would write a bad word backwards on a slip of paper. After that, we would pass it to the partner, who would unscramble the word and was duty-bound to speak it in a voice almost loud enough by be detected by the Nun. If the Nun happened to seek out the source of the commotion that generally followed, the speaking partner was on his honor to hide the mystery word. If caught with it, he was to take full responsibility, which invariably meant detention.

Now, most of the words were routine Saxonisms for body parts and functions. But, one day, I received from Johnny a word I did not recognize. He howled from across the room as I, wide-eyed, virtually bellowed the offending syllable not once but many times, amazed at the reaction it