This Close to Sitting Ducks

By A. M. Langston

Francisco and Thomas moved out to the country to escape the noise of city life. All was going as planned until their quiet, elderly neighbors passed away and world renowned painter Radwin Ali moved in next door. Radwin Ali's wild lifestyle soon catches up to him, bringing in unwanted attention that drives Francisco mad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. M. Langston
• Release date: Nov 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781393616108

A. M. Langston

A. M. Langston is a restless millennial searching for meaning inside the wires and waves that make up the technology surrounding us during our every waking minute. Born in Illinois in 1988 and raised across the United States, he has called New Mexico home since 2004. "Couch to Couch, Never Leaving the House", Langston's first poetry collection, was published on June 21st, 2017.

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Prologue

BEFORE FRANCISCO WAS born, his parents fucked like wild animals. When he came into the world, it was out of wedlock. His father fought in the war right after getting married, leaving behind his young son and wife. The pair lived in a small apartment with no air conditioning. It was above a bus stop that was crowded all hours of the day. The bathroom was through Francisco’s bedroom. His bedroom door folded closed but had no lock. He spent the first few years of his life with little privacy. Guests at the apartment were often caught inspecting his belongings.

It was a smokey little place. Francisco’s mother and her two best friends were never seen without cigarettes. The three of them sat for hours, drinking cheap champagne and beer in the kitchen. Francisco's first taste of beer was at the age of three. The boy didn’t realize that adults had jobs until he was much older. When discussing him with her friends, his mother affectionately referred to her son as the little bastard.

On his fifth birthday, Francisco told his mother that he didn’t remember having a father. She showed him pictures of the man, but that didn’t help.

See, son. He has the same eyes and square chin as you, she told him.

In a meeting at the school, Francisco’s teacher told her that a few other boys had been saying the same thing. No one could tell if they were serious, but Francisco’s mother believed her son. When they got home from the meeting, she shut herself in her bedroom for hours and cried.

While the war was going on, the city seemed to be in a perpetual autumn. For most of Francisco’s early childhood, a warm breeze blew between the tall buildings. Sometimes it would rain, but no one remembered seeing any clouds. After the men left, though, the sun didn’t shine as bright, nor as yellow. Everyone who was left behind grew tired of the golden-brown sun. It was the star of a planet on the brink of destruction. The veil of smog that blocked it out sometimes during the day made everyone feel even worse. The small family didn’t live a horrible life while Francisco’s father was off killing whoever it was that deserved to die. When he got back, despite being a bit of an empty shell sometimes, their lives got even better.

The memory of the day the sun came back out followed Francisco into college. He was at a corner store with his father, who’d bought him a chocolate milk. Near the back of the aisle next to the big window at the front of the store, Francisco heard another child say it.

Look, it’s summer again.

Not for all us, an old man said. For some of us, it’s going to be winter for the rest of our lives.

Looking towards the voice down the aisle, the young Francisco saw the man in an old, ratty uniform. The cash register dinged, then Francisco’s memory of that day ended. Occasionally, throughout the rest of his life, Francisco would think about that experience. He would remember two other people who were in the store. It seemed to him like he should have remembered who they were, but he never could.

From then on, it seemed like the big city had no fall, spring, or winter. The small family moved from their cold, little apartment at the center of the city. They bought a good-sized house in the suburbs. Francisco’s mother jumped with joy when she turned down the temperature on the thermostat and it worked.

The new house was far from the women Francisco’s mother used to see every day. She got a job in one of the small grocery stores a few blocks away to pass the time. It pleased his father that she was leaving the house on a regular basis. That is until he caught his teenage son testicles deep in a session of sexual exploration with one of his schoolmates. After that, Ronnie wasn’t allowed over anymore, and Francisco’s mother was no longer allowed to go to work.

The summer maintained a golden warmth until Francisco left home to go to university, long after he forgot about his first lover. When his mother drank a more gin than she could handle, it was summer. After his father smacked him across the face for talking back, summer. Francisco always thought summer seemed to end, not because he left home, but because the next war started. The friends he grew up with were leaving, and they were dying.

It still wasn’t horrible for Francisco, though. In class, he met another young man named Thomas, whom he fell madly in love with. For a while, it seemed like the autumn still followed Thomas around. When they went out to plays or concerts, the wind always blew chilly. That was part of what Francisco loved about him.

One night, in their third semester together, Thomas confided in Francisco that he’d had a rough childhood. His father died because of the same war that Francisco’s returned from. A gas cloud covered the land around Thomas’ father and his best friends, filling their eyes and lungs. None of them fully recovered. Most died within five years of Thomas’ father. He told Francisco that he was jealous his father was still alive. Thomas said Francisco didn’t appreciate his parents enough. The pair got into an argument that resulted in them splitting before mid-term exams. Thomas disappeared mysteriously for the duration of winter break.

In the same fashion as when he left, Thomas returned out of the blue. It was the day before their graduation ceremony, on a dark, damp night. There was slush on the ground from snow that had fallen that morning. A girl’s heels built up a slippery crust of ice on the bottom. She lost her footing and slid down four steps outside the auditorium. Francisco looked in her direction when she let out a screech, and there, at the top of the steps, was Thomas. He wore his graduation gown and a slight, crooked smile. As Francisco walked up the steps towards him, he stood to wait.

I made a mistake, Francisco. I will never leave again if you take me back, Thomas said.

A few years later, Thomas and Francisco married. The ceremony took place at a small chapel on the university campus. Neither of them wanted to hold it there, but it was dirt cheap for alumni. The officiant was a lovely older woman who lived in an assisted living complex. Every meeting they had while planning the wedding was at her tiny apartment across town. The couple liked the apartment so much they tracked down another building built by the same company. For the first five years of their marriage, Francisco and Thomas lived in a tiny loft.

After saving as much as they could for those first five years, they started talking about moving out to the countryside. Every Sunday during those years, Francisco would drive Thomas out of the city, into the forest roads. One weekend, while exploring a town they’d never heard of before, they found a plot of land for sale. Francisco laid down in the fallen orange leaves and flung them around. He threw a handful at Thomas, who kicked a small pile at him. They knew this was the place where they wanted to grow old. The rust-covered, tan little car would hold everything they owned. Their savings were enough to build a house and to start their own business. It was fate that they pick up everything and move onto that square of grass.

One

AS OFTEN AS HE COULD, Francisco sat on the porch, hands resting on his plump belly, smoking a cigar. The ash of his cigars matched his thinning hair, but was a little more gray. He found the most time to smoke in the early morning. Gurkhas and Liga Privadas were the only cigars he smoked. Thomas would sit with him at times, but only if it happened to be afternoon. Francisco enjoyed the cool, east-coast breezes that swept through after the sun rose. Nine months out of the year, Thomas was uncomfortable. After so many years of forcing himself to sit in the wind, he decided stopped. Thomas became very vocal about his opinion that there were better ways for him to spend time with his husband.

Francisco agreed with Thomas that there were better ways for the pair to enjoy quality time together. For many years, they worked together at the small grocery store that they owned in town. The only store around for miles, it was a successful business venture. Now, they were old, though. A tall, dark, young man, Xavier, worked there for most of the time Thomas and Francisco owned it. Thomas worked the counter for a handful of years after his husband lost interest in it. Eventually, he decided it would be best for his health if he didn’t stand still at the cash register all day.

Thomas and Francisco both loved spending time in their home. It was a large plot of land. There were so many trees that their gardener, Maggie, always said the forest would swallow the property whole one day. Thomas designed the house himself, with a bit of aid from an architect he knew from university. The couple’s dinner guests would regularly get lost on their way from the living room to the dining room. After several complaints, Francisco hung cleverly placed paintings that helped to point out the path. One of them was of a Russian writer with a stern expression, holding a quill pen in his outstretched arm. Another, a ballet dancer dancing with a swan, both facing the direction of the dining room door.

A porch wrapped around the entire house. Chairs sat around every corner. If Francisco wanted to sit in the sun in the winter, there was a chair. When he felt like overlooking the small pond next to the house, he could. Thomas preferred the front of the house but rarely sat outside alone. In the early days, men would come to their house to threaten them. Many a pick-up truck sped by, tossing road kill at the couple as Thomas drank tea and Francisco smoked. The tranquility of the New England air was always interrupted by those frightening memories, at least, during those first few years. Not long after the third raccoon landed on their steps, Thomas bought a shotgun.

Neither of them had ever shot the shotgun at anyone. They each took it out once, behind their house. Thomas shot a pumpkin, despite the trouble he had holding the gun up. Francisco didn’t hit anything. Word must have got out about their purchase, according to Francisco. Once they had the gun, the taunts only came from teenage boys. The boys would often end up coming into their store a few days later to apologize. Xavier often remarked on how silly it was the grown men, who likely owned guns as well, were afraid of that cheap twelve-gauge. Francisco would argue, saying it was intimidating.

Grown men know the difference between a toy and a gun, but boys do not.

There were a few good years, after purchasing the gun, that neither of them had anything to worry about. Those years ended suddenly, and their quiet life became full of hissing static.

Their neighbor, known to them only as Joe, lived in his house since the end of World War Two. His wife died the year before Thomas and Francisco moved to town. For the entire time that they lived next to one another, Joe neither caused nor reported any problems. Not a sound came from his windows. After a while, he could be heard yelling in pain while working on some project in his garage. That phase only lasted a few months. He’d lost the hearing in one ear while fighting the Germans. Had a nasty scar all the way across his back. His wife, Ethel, was pampered for the rest of her life after they wed. After she died, Joe was only seen outside working in his yard. His yard was a beautiful garden thanks to his efforts. Thomas and Francisco regularly found baskets of vegetables outside their front door. Anything that would grow, Joe would share with them. He included things that weren’t supposed to grow that far north. Maggie often accused Joe of buying those items, but only when he wasn't around.

Eight years after Ethel died, Joe joined her in the afterlife. There was a large estate sale, where Francisco found an Italian tobacco pipe and a box of beautiful cigars. Shortly after Joe’s death, a new neighbor moved in. This man was an artist. He painted large pictures that people liked looking at. Thomas and Francisco spoke with Maggie in depth about how they didn’t understand why people liked looking at his paintings so much. They didn’t understand why he was driving an expensive convertible, having never worked a regular job. The first time they met, he introduced himself as Radwin Ali. He gifted the couple the painting of the Russian writer. Even though he hated it, Francisco hung it outside of the living room because it was the place that bothered Thomas the most.

Do you have to hang that putrid thing on the most visible wall in our house? This isn’t what I pictured seeing every time I lead our guests to the back of the house.

Thomas, it looks perfect in this light. There’s nowhere else in the whole house that this would look good. I know it’s dreadful, but it belongs right here.

Francisco didn’t believe at all that the painting belonged on the wall where he hung it. He thought it was a good way to tease Thomas for years to come.

Radwin Ali invited the two of them to his housewarming party, but they declined. He’d left the note in the same spot that Joe would leave his baskets of vegetables. Seeing the paint smeared envelope on the porch brought back a group of emotions that Francisco, who found it, didn’t want to feel.

The party was loud. In one form or another, it seemed to go on for a month. After it ended, another party took its place. Whether it was day or night, Radwin Ali kept a constant stream of visitors. The guests were all enamored by the isolation and colorful nature of the area. None of them failed to express their awe. A car would pull up next to one of the dozen others in Radwin Ali’s driveway, then someone would let out a horrible shriek. Overnight guests of Thomas and Francisco were regularly awakened at odd hours by the screams. Their shock would subside when Radwin Ali shouted back.

I know. Isn’t it extravagant?

Things got to the point where if Thomas didn’t warn their guests of the disturbing activity, Francisco would. it became a strange habit that neither of them enjoyed forming. Many of their guests would announce that they’d changed their minds about staying the night upon hearing the warning. The couple became jealous that Radwin Ali could have all the guests in the world, and they could have none.

When Ali died, a torturous social weight was lifted from their shoulders. Thomas said he felt bad about how he reacted afterward. Francisco called him a liar. Truthfully, they were both relieved that they could resume a normal life. They had their own guests over again. Most of the time, those guests would stay the night. For a while, no one asked about Radwin Ali’s accident. It was a summer night, while the group was drinking a variety of Malbecs, that someone finally asked about it. Francisco was reluctant at first but told the story as his friend persisted.

"Radwin Ali drove a fast car, a convertible. It was blue, with a tan top. He never took it to a mechanic. Obviously, he didn’t know how to work on it himself. The thing had a simple problem. Looked to me like the connector between the alternator and the headlights, or something of that nature. Every so often, his headlights would go dark.

When he drank at those infernal celebrations, he liked to take girls out for a drive. He’d go up and down the dirt road here to the east. I don’t think he lived here long enough to learn them well because he’d ran his car into a ditch once before.

He took two girls out in his car one night and sped up and down the