Music for Arguments

By Michael Neal Morris

Twenty short stories. These tales are about families in turmoil, men who wrestle with the expectations of others and what is expected of them, and hard to find grace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Neal Morris
• Release date: May 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370728046

Michael Neal Morris

Michael Neal Morris is the author of Based on Imaginary Events, Release, Haiku, Etc., Music for Arguments, In Domestic News and other books. He has published a number of stories, poems, and essays both online and in print. He teaches Composition and Creative Writing at Eastfield College in Mesquite. He lives with his wife, children, and two snarky cats just outside the Dallas area.

Book preview

Music for Arguments

Selected Short Stories

by

Michael Neal Morris

Copyright 2018 by Michael Neal Morris

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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Contents

The End of the Argument

Down at the Twenty-Five

Matchmaker Moon

The Hairbrush

Puppy

A Little Accident

Promise

The Stain

Singing Each to Each

The Noisy Neighbor

Fixing the Sandwich

Jabba the Cop, or The Appearance of Evil

I've Been Killed Before

Except the Weather

Some Rope

Getting rid of the cats

The Last Bottle

The Guardian

Partita for Continuo

Dictionary for the Dying

Acknowledgements

Other books by Michael Neal Morris

About the author

The End of the Argument

The gun, of course, felt awkward in his hand. Everyone but the baby and the man's five-year old son, who thought it might be a toy, gasped when he brought it in. Except for the television, the room had been quiet for a full half hour, and the argument, which had recently rocked the house, was presumed over. The mother-in-law had continued pealing the potatoes as when he left the room and was still focused on the John Wayne movie in front of her.

What are you doing with that thing? his wife asked.

What is it? asked the mother-in-law, without moving her eyes. After getting no answer, she tilted her head around. "So you are going to threaten me now? You are stupid."

He sat down to her right. No, he said calmly. I'm not going to threaten you. I'm going to make your dreams come true.

Well, blow your brains out in the yard, so I can watch my show in peace and so your overworked wife won't have to clean up your mess twice in one day.

He laughed. The boy's eyes were wide as if he suddenly were seeing his father in a cartoon. The man said slowly, No. No. No. I'm not going to blow my brains out. You are.

The boy said, Dad, I'm scared. The mother-in-law rolled her eyes.

Sorry son, the father said, tossing the youngster's light brown hair. The boy sat in front of and to the right of his father, just out of his grandmother's reach.

Where did you get that? his wife asked.

You remember. I bought it for my mother, for protection. Then she died--

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the mother-in-law said. She died. She's dead. Why won't you bury the hag? Even in the grave she's a burden.

You shut up about my mother. She was a good--

You brought it up. Look, be quiet.

He got up and walked over to the television. He stood in front of it.

The mother-in-law frowned at him with a hard, violent face. What is wrong with you? You made your scene. You flashed your toy. Now go away.

He turned off the television.

Hey! they all, seemingly even the baby, yelled.

You are going to listen to me, he told her. You want me dead. You said so just an hour ago. Well, I'm going to give you the chance. You don't care what effect your actions have on anyone. You just sit there and complain about everything I do, and run down my wife and my children. You even got mad at the baby for crying while your soap was on. Well, here. Here is a gun. Shoot me now, in front of my family.

What are you trying to prove? she asked smugly.

Only what your peace and quiet have cost my fam--.

Yak. Yak. Yak. Will you please shut up? She picked up the remote and turned the television back on.

He started to turn it off, then reconsidered. He walked up to his mother-in-law. She pointed the potato peeler at him like a finger. Get away from me.

He lay the gun in her lap. Shut me up. His smile was that of a dangerous man proud of a grand unfolding plan.

There was a moment where their eyes locked. Then the old woman shook her head, disgusted, as if at a man in the streets talking to himself.

His wife said, Stop this, honey.

His son said, Dad?

He turned to his wife. Shut up. You asked for this when you moved her in here and made me leave my own mother to die alone.

She started to protest, but he yelled, I said 'Shut up!' and she held her hand over her mouth as she started crying. The baby's own crying, all this time unnoticed, seemed now to be in competition with his parents and with John Wayne's cavalry.

He stood up and backed again towards the television. Goodbye son, he said. Spreading his arms, he bore his eyes at his mother-in-law. Well?

She was pretending to watch the Duke through his body. After a moment, she released an exasperated sigh, and without letting go of the peeler, placed the gun on the small table beside her. Not today, Mr. Martyr. I don't have time to dispose of you today. Now if you'd move out of the way. She looked down at the half-peeled potato in her left hand, the last she was planning to prepare. Then she mumbled, Probably not even loaded. She looked up at him as he moved away from the set. Probably not even real.

His wife started for the gun, but he got to it first. It is quite real, he said with a slow confidence that did not match his movements as he turned toward the set and fired until the Duke had taken every round.

His wife screamed in fright, then relief, then anger. His son ran to a corner, then turned to see his grandmother stand up, dropping the bowl of potatoes on the floor. She kicked over the paper bag in which she had been dropping the limp skins.

Then the boy heard his mother's faint body fall to the floor as he watched his father's first and last triumphant expression wilt. The potato peeler stuck out of the man's neck like a wind up key on a lost and broken toy.

Down at the Twenty-Five

He sat upright, watching the Redskins and Giants battle, his left hand fingering the tiny joystick on the arm of the wheelchair. His eyes scanned the line of scrimmage, and then shot further open at Joe Morris' amazing block on Dexter Manley.

A play went through his head. He lined up slot left. He sprinted twelve yards, and then cut in at a forty-five degree angle toward the post. He leapt for the ball as if lifted by wires and caught the ball smiling. He was hit as soon as the ball was tucked -- he knew he would be -- and fell rudely to the artificial turf. He heard then a ring, like a dozen phones in one booth and thought Hold the ball. Don't let go of the ball.

His wife stood beside the television with a pot holder in her right hand and both hands on her hips. I've got lunch ready. Let's eat.

Oh, sure. he said kindly. But watch. This guy, number seventeen, I like him. He's got great poise.

McCarty had poise. He could stay in that pocket listening to the eager panting of defensive linemen and throw the ball a mile, even at the last second. He was no scrambler, but he’d take hits all day if it meant winning.

He looked down and found a spoonful of peas in his lap. Constance, could you, uh... he started to say, and then decided to wait and see if there would be more to clean up.

Someone had taken a club to his forehead. He awoke, but his body was stuck to the turf, his limbs held by invisible irons. A smell, like death with thick perfume, invaded his nostrils and his face shook.

He sipped the iced tea then shuddered because he thought he had been holding a beer. She had taken, he noticed, the dishes and tried to clean up but a small stain rested on the yellow shirt, like a dirty baby on his stomach.

The stain, light brown, grew darker then spread. It soon covered the lower portion of his body and the wheels of the chair. As his shoulders were being swallowed, he heard the commentator exclaim: Ow! Davis really took a shot that time. He moved the joystick wildly, but the motor just clicked with the sound of an empty gun.

Constance then was holding him, kneeling beside the chair and clutching his shoulders, his tremendous sobs pressing against her neck. He kicked at the set, at the stretcher, at the clean shirt of the doctor. But the leg stood still, and the set continued its roar of static. Then the room was quiet, and she began to loosen her grip and stand. She stood there a moment frightened by his face which was purple with rage. His right hand was clenched rock tight and the veins in his forearm swelled. She touched the fist hesitantly. He whimpered during the stadium's polite applause before play resumed, then made tiny shrieking noises until sleep came like a blanket.

Matchmaker Moon

The moon seemed closer than usual. Back in college on nights like this, the Texas heat cooling the air to a simmering lust, Steve would point nonchalantly at the moon, smile into a girl’s eyes, and say, I think it’s trying to tell us something. Usually that was enough to get that girl to take a walk under that bright matchmaker. And a slow walk on a hot night, just long enough for the two to drain their bottles, would usually get that girl to assume the moon was saying, Sleep with this guy and you’ll never be lonely or at least, If you don’t have sex with him, someone less deserving will.

But now Steve sat on his front porch holding a twenty-two repeating rifle across his widening belly. He was waiting for his daughter, sixteen, to come home from her date. Steve glanced at his watch. Five to two.

His wife had never fallen for the matchmaking moon line, but she’d heard about it from a friend who confessed, a couple weeks before their wedding, to having had it used on her. The bride to be dismissed the story as jealousy, but remembered it years later. That was after she had found out about Steve’s affair with his boss’ secretary. The affair cost both their jobs, but Steve lost even more. His wife would remind him of it from time to time to keep him quiet. And on nights like this, when his daughter was late, she enjoyed taunting him.

Maybe the moon was telling her to spread her legs a little longer.

With that, she went to bed and left him in front of the television. When midnight came and went, he got the gun from the front hall closet and took it to the porch. He only wanted to scare the boy, but he loaded the rifle just in case. It’s a dangerous world, he told himself.

He sat on a creaky lawn chair in what darkness the moon would allow. Steve had been there some time when he had the sudden feeling that he was exposed. His t-shirt had rolled up a bit and a tuft of fat showed in a dull glisten. He set the gun on the porch, stood up and pushed the shirt down. Then he heard his daughter stepping across the yard.

Awful late, he said when she stopped with one foot on the porch.

Her hair had places that were stuck together from sweat and heat. Her make-up was paler, except the lipstick, which was completely gone. I had to walk home, she said.

Noticed your boyfriend didn’t drop you off so I could hear his music blaring out of his piece of –

Daddy, please! We had a fight and broke up and he wouldn’t take me home.

Steve sat down and tried to read his daughter’s face for pain. He saw fatigue. You could’ve called. Not safe to be –

The girl interrupted with an exasperated breath. I could’ve, but I didn’t. I’m sorry, okay? I wanted to walk. Can you ground me or lecture me tomorrow? I’m really beat.

She started to storm into the house. He caught her wrist and looked up at her. She glared at him with her tongue firmly pressing the lower lip away from her teeth. Her arm was