One Black Day

By Jim Cheney

One Black Day is set against the landscape of a forsaken Midwestern town where limited opportunities and a meager existence have corroded residents' sense of belonging into an enduring nightmare, filled with corrupt decisions and permanent consequences.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Prufrock Communications, LLC
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781736685525

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Author’s Note

This book is a work of fiction, although not entirely so. There are characters and experiences within that were archived in my childhood memory. And some of these have haunted me much of my adult life. I fictionalized their account because to write of them strictly as they respectively lived and occurred would not warrant a novel. It would have been more poignant and monumental as a poem, which would afford a vague and eloquent requiem. But these memories are not eloquent, and the idea of pursuing anything other than what you are reading now felt short-sighted and lazy. I wanted to explore not just their existence, but the nature of that existence, and why it should be so impactful and ruthlessly nagging. I hope that I have done justice by this recollection, and I hope that you will be engaged not only by my own exploration, but by the story that unfolded as a result.

Jim Cheney

Lookout Mountain, GA

Winter 2022

Prologue

He loomed over the prone body, holding the worn iron skillet aloft in his right hand, a thick syrupy glaze of bacon grease in the blackened bottom. Because of the tilted and elevated angle, it was oozing over the baked surface in a sluggish smear. Jimmy Barlow, five-eleven and 160 pounds, dressed in baggy sweatpants, a muscle t-shirt, and an apron, looked at the young man on the floor, who was not moving. A trickle of blood came from beneath the downturned side of his face, dark red against the scuffed concrete of the cafeteria kitchen floor. His body lay flat, legs splayed out, one arm beneath his torso, elbow thin and bony and making a right angle, the other arm extended toward the doorway from which he had entered. There was a pistol a few feet from the outstretched hand. Jimmy looked at the face, which was pale, pockmarked. It was a teenage face, and one that might look older if the kid were alert. Scary and threatening even, given the gun that he had dropped. The fire alarms had gone off a few moments before the kid had turned the corner into the kitchen. Jimmy had been wrapping up what he needed to do before the students all came in for lunch. He set the skillet down with a loud clatter on a stainless steel workspace next to the bulk industrial dishwasher that was full of clean plates, glasses, and utensils. He looked around the large kitchen, his eyes wide and his expression as flat and unreflective as flagstone. One of the kitchen staff, a rail-thin Black woman named Geraldine, was poking her head up from behind a rolling Uline steel table stacked with more dishes that rose in disproportionate columns like a white and occasionally chipped ceramic skyline; her nose, eyes, and face visible below her curly black hair that was capped with a net. He turned away from her and saw the other woman who worked in the kitchen, Deidra, crouched in a corner next to the walk-in cooler, her hands over her ears to block out the insanely loud sound of the alarm that reverberated throughout the cafeteria’s cinder block and concrete surfaces. He looked back at the kid on the floor and was about to run his hand through his stringy black hair when he noticed the bacon fat on it and rubbed the hand on his apron instead. His pulse was ticking down slowly and he could feel each beat of his heart like someone repetitively striking a snare drum.

Whap...

Whap…

Whap…

Goddamn, Geraldine said. She had come from behind the table of plates and was standing next to his shoulder.

You okay, Jimmy? He nodded without looking at her. There was no flutter in the boy’s eyelids, his chest was not rising and falling. The trickle of blood was thickening and was running down the natural slope of the floor toward an industrial drain that was located beneath the dishwasher.

You killed him, she said. Jimmy stood very still.

Look at that shit, Jimmy. He’s dead, man. Ain’t he, D? Deidra had joined them, looking over their shoulders. Jimmy could smell the spearmint gum she was chewing.

Uh-huh, she said, and put her hands back over her ears. If he ain’t, she yelled over the sound, promise you that he’ll wish he was if he wakes up.

They had been working together in the kitchen. Listening to the radio. Marvin Gaye’s "Mercy Mercy Me." Geraldine had been singing along in snatches of the chorus and they had been laughing at her flat melody. Then they had all looked up together when they heard the shot come from behind the closed cafeteria doors, faint but unmistakable. Then the frantic screaming and yelling, and then the blare of the alarm, making each of them jump. They had looked at one another in confusion, their hands stopped mid-motion like a candid photograph at a birthday party. Jimmy had been the only one with a clear view of the doors, seeing them through the large open window that looked out on the dining area with its clean tables and chairs neatly tucked away. The kid on the floor had come through the doors as if propelled, and Jimmy had just enough time to see him catch his breath, holding the pistol to his side. Jimmy had stepped out of view and motioned for Deidra and Geraldine to get back. Then he had picked up the first thing he saw and stood just inside the entrance to the kitchen, realizing that the only way out was through that door and out the back to the loading dock. Geraldine had tried to say something and he shushed her with a look. Down, he mouthed and saw that Deidra had retreated back to the walk-in cooler. He waited, trying to control his breathing. He could not hear anything with the alarm going off, but knowing he stood in the way of the only exit, he closed his eyes and tried to time the gunman’s steps in their direction. The earlier shot was an indication that whoever was coming was not afraid to fire the gun. There would be one chance before he found them standing between himself and the way out. Jimmy closed his eyes and pressed firmly against the wall. He was trying to mirror his thinking with that of the man holding the gun. He counted backwards from ten and then stepped into the opening and swung the skillet just as the gunman came through the door. The thud of the impact made him wince and he felt the vibration come up his arm like a dull electric current. The body dropped instantly and never even jerked. It hit the floor as if all the muscle and bone had disintegrated.

Now they stood like three people watching the bus they were supposed to be on drive away without them. The speed of the previous few minutes had crawled to a stop, the alarm kept blaring, and now Geraldine was covering her ears. Jimmy stepped over the body and noticed through the far-side windows that it had started to cloud over outside, the windows growing dull with the faint light like filmy gauze stretched over the glass. Then the doors burst open again and two cops came through, guns drawn, scanning the cafeteria frantically. They zeroed in on Jimmy at the same time and began screaming over the alarm. But Jimmy could not hear what they were saying, so he raised his arms, then pointed down at the apron and at the kitchen behind him. They advanced on him quickly and he tried not to make any movements. When they were closer, one of them yelled over the alarm.

Where?

Jimmy lowered one hand and pointed over his shoulder. Behind me, he screamed back. I hit him. The second cop went past Jimmy and stopped when he saw the body, then came back into view, holding the gun the kid had dropped. He raised it so the other cop could see. He nodded and holstered his weapon.

Let me get this fucking alarm shut off, he yelled. You good? The other cop nodded and turned to go back to the body. Then the cop in front of Jimmy turned and ran out the door, and moments later, as suddenly as the blaring had started, it mercifully stopped. Jimmy walked within view of the cop and the body on the floor and watched the officer check for a pulse and then begin looking through the kid’s pockets, moving him back and forth like a rolled carpet. Jimmy stared at Deidra and Geraldine, who were watching too. Then a group came into the cafeteria, all running. Jimmy recognized the principal, whose tie was flapping as he ran. There were a couple more people behind him that Jimmy did not know. They stood in a cluster and watched the cop kneeling over the body. Then he stood up quickly. A woman, standing behind a couple of the men, held a hand to her mouth.

He’s dead, the cop said, emotionless and impersonal.

Jesus Christ, the principal said, is that… Then he stopped short and scanned all of the faces looking at him expectantly. I’ve got to get back to the other student. The one he shot.

Don’t go far, the cop said, and the principal, whose name was Dickson, looked at him with a disbelieving expression. Then he ran out, the leather soles of his shiny black shoes slapping and echoing in the otherwise quiet cafeteria.

Looks like you might be today’s hero, the cop who had examined the kid said, his hands on his gun belt, mockingly impressed. What did you say you hit him with? Jimmy did not answer.

He got him good, Geraldine said. Saved our asses. They could hear the radio now. A commercial gave way to the DJ. Thanks for listening, the husky female voice purred. Here’s a track to take you back. Then the opening chords of Creeque Alley came through the small speakers.

That’s that folk shit they play ‘round lunch, Deidra said, but no one seemed to hear her.

You’ll have to make a statement, the cop said to Jimmy. You girls as well. Detective will be here soon I expect. The blood stream had almost reached the drain in the floor.

What kind of statement? Jimmy said.

I don’t know, the cop said, shrugging. Just tell him what happened.

Part One

1

Picture this, I said, sitting with my legs crossed on a sofa in a therapist’s office located above a small bar called Bert’s. It was the watering hole for the guys coming off shift at the factory that squatted like an industrial tumor further up the hill from us, belching black filth into the sky through stacks like soiled fingers, blaring horns that never failed to startle you, whether or not you were close by. I could hear a handful of the workers down there getting warmed up, talking in loud voices and swearing at each other and then laughing in their exhausted, filthy good humor and relief at being out of one dingy hole and securely seated inside a second. A couple hours from now and they would be pushing into one another’s faces, maybe even spilling out the front door of Bert’s and throwing drunken punches at one another until either the cops showed up or they tired of the whole circus and went back inside, more beer negotiating a short-term truce. The whole building smelled like burnt tires and I wondered why this therapist would choose to have these personal conversations in a place where rats scurried around the stairwell and the brick was coming off the frame one mortar joint at a time. Downtown is where everything goes to die, my friend Charlie said once, and although he was probably right, I defended it with a lackluster assertion that, like it or not, the cluster of claustrophobic buildings that we knew as downtown was about the only remaining physical evidence that the town had ever known a hint of prosperity.

Go ahead, my therapist said. She was a short, well-built woman. Difficult to guess her age. She had large brown eyes, close-cropped hair with clothes that she had purchased in a city far away from where we sat now. Her posture was straight and her demeanor was genuinely attentive. But none of that really mattered. We didn’t judge people’s physical appearance all that much, not because we were stereotypically Midwestern, but because any insult would actually turn a critical eye back on the speaker and nobody wanted to put themselves in a position where they would be made to feel any more self-conscious than they already did. It was safer to keep your thoughts to yourself and wait until you were someplace neutral like Bert’s. The irony of me being in a therapist’s office was not lost on me, but it also had not been my choice

The therapist’s name was Nancy and it suited her. She was also the only therapist for fifty miles in any direction, and regardless of appearance or capability, it was her name that came up when my parole officer flipped through the worn cards in his Rolodex.

Picture this, I said again. I’m about nine or ten I guess, and my dad took me fishing on the Little Fork. It was spring and the water was way up and it was one of those mornings when he was in a good mood. You know. Just a lot of sunlight and the car was running for once and my mother was not on his case and whatever. So I’m standing next to the Little Fork with the water running down through that bend near the highway turn-off where it gets real narrow and everything speeds up. I’ve got this shitty Zebco rod that was more a toy than a fishing pole and my dad had stopped at the market and bought some nightcrawlers and some beer for him and here I am trying to catch something in what looked like a flood coming at me and I turn around and my dad is gone. Gone. So I think that he’s walked back to the car for more cigarettes and beer and so I put the rod down on the sand and start up the bank and sure enough he’d gone back for the beer and cigarettes because there were fresh empties scattered around and butts all over the place, but no car. It was like something reached out of the sky and grabbed him and the car and pulled them back up into the clouds. Course I knew that was ridiculous even at that age, but I recall thinking it for just a brief second, and then I tried putting the pieces together with the little that I knew and finally I went back down to the Little Fork and tried to fish some more, but something kept eating away at me and after a while I tossed the rod in the grass and kicked over the carton of nightcrawlers to let the worms loose.

Was that the first time anything like that had happened to you?

I guess, I said. First time I remember something like that happening, maybe. I can remember plenty of disappointing things about my dad, but that was the first time that he left me behind like that.

And where had he gone? She asked her questions very politely and for some reason I felt like talking with her. Normally I don’t feel comfortable speaking about things like that; troubled past and all that therapeutic sensitivity, but she was calm, not rushing things, and foreign to my nature, I felt relieved to be exploring and recounting this event out loud.

Probably for more beer, I said. The room had these big windows that went from the floor to the ceiling and had that wavy glass in them like it was melting. Outside it was gray and cold and I knew that if I touched the glass I would be able to feel the cold thin air trying to make its way inside. That kind of air is always pressing to get inside. It never seems satisfied with its own coldness; it’s like it nourishes off skin and bone and will find any way it can to seek it out.

These windows are really great, I said. Nancy looked at them and nodded, but I did not get the sense that she thought they were great. I got the sense that she had to probably pay for her gas bill and that she would have just as soon walled them up and kept warm.

More beer, she said, still looking out the window. And was that where he’d gone; to get more beer? I did not answer, but I shook my head. She was nice, waiting patiently like that.

It really doesn’t matter, I finally said. Whether he went for more beer or not, I mean. Wherever he went, he lost control of the car and died in the wreck. They found him before they found me. I never saw him after. I just remember sitting down there and envisioning him crawling his way back up the bank. I remember thinking that when he got to the top he would not have turned around to check and see if I was okay. He would have kept going so he would not have to feel guilty. I looked at her and paused intentionally to see if she would want to ask a question about that, but she only held her hands in her lap and looked at me in a way that indicated I should continue. There was nothing in her expression that hinted at what she might be thinking. And instead of this making me feel awkward, it had a calming effect and the words formed easily.

The way I look at it, I said, is that the wreck happened on the way back and not while he was leaving. To me that means he was coming back to get me. That he had not completely forgotten that I was down there by the river alone. I rubbed my hands on my jeans, which was a nervous habit I’d had ever since I was a little kid. Something about the motion and the feel of the denim fabric was comforting. Nancy watched me do this and cleared her throat quietly but loud enough to make me look at her.

Do you want something to drink?

Sure, I said. She got up from her chair. It had an overstuffed cushion, but she had barely made an indentation; she had been leaning forward, keeping her back straight, and I wondered again why she was talking to people like me in such a creepy place. She looked like she should be working in a clean skyscraper office in Columbus or Cincinnati. Maybe even New York. Anyplace but above Bert’s with the mean cold air outside tapping its yellowed fingers against the thin panes of glass. She walked over to a small refrigerator that was sitting on top of an old blue milk crate, brought out two bottles of water, came back across the room, and handed one to me. She then unscrewed the top on hers and took a drink before sitting down. Nancy, I thought.

Okay, so tell me more about why it’s important to you that the wreck happened where it did—that it happened in the direction that it did—I think I understand, but I’d like for you to tell me more about it if you can. I took a drink from my water and put it on a small table sitting next to the couch, careful to use one of the coasters that she had stacked there. There was a picture of a fox on the one that I took off the top. The animal was looking out from the coaster and its tail was bushy and exaggerated and its eyes carried a predatory expression, full of hen house slaughter and greed.

I guess so, I said. This is weird, you know? She nodded.

I do know, she said. It’s important that you understand that I do know this is hard. It’s the only way you’ll be able to trust me. Trust me, I thought and continued.

I guess that I have held onto the fact that he was coming back because I never really felt secure around my father, I said. "I never felt like he cared enough to be around, but he cared just enough not to abandon me and my mother and brother. He had a darkness to him. Not mean, I guess, although he could be that. More absent if that makes sense. Like his head was always someplace else. And after a while, sitting next to the river, the sun started to go down and it was getting cold and I didn’t have anything on except a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and of course the river being as swollen as it was it made a lot of noise. I remember sitting under some trees on the bank and straining to hear the cars up above me on the highway, but the water was too loud and that made waiting on him even worse because I wouldn’t hear his tires on the gravel that was scattered all over the pull off." I paused for a second, my senses alert, back in that place along the bank.

You know how when you are inside of the house and someone comes home, the dog will bark or you will hear a brake or the garage door go up and you know that whoever it is has gotten home safe? That’s what I was waiting on, and it never came, and so for that whole day I sat there, and then into the night. When that state cop found me shivering down on the bank, I was thinking that my father had finally decided that he’d had enough and gone away for good.

I took a deep breath after all that spilled out. I’d never said so much in one sitting about the wreck or even my father. Nancy looked at me and then indicated with her head to the bottle of water sitting on the fox coaster and I took my hands off my thighs where they were getting ready to work their soothing magic. I took the water bottle and drank most of it down.

I guess when I found out after that he was on his way back up the highway, I was kinda relieved. And really, I don’t know whether that understanding or the fact that he was dead was more powerful. I still don’t think that I know. Nancy looked at me carefully and I thought maybe I had said too much, or maybe said the wrong thing all together, but what I had said was true. It was never clear in my mind whether his thinking of me just before he flipped the car over or never seeing him again carried more weight. And now that I had opened this all up, it was like pulling up the corner of a rock and peering beneath it to see what was crawling around in the wet, moldy dirt. I remember sitting along the bank in the dark, shivering and trying not to cry and then crying hard and loud, hoping that maybe someone would hear me—that feeling of being left alone with nothing but the roaring water and the passing cars above me. I wanted to get up and go stand along the side of the road, but I couldn’t move from where I was sitting. It was like I was punishing myself for something, and in the strangest way felt that I deserved it. I was just a kid, but there was a real gravity to the way I was feeling. Nancy was not pushing me, but I felt a pressure inside my head and chest and a compulsion to get the rest of it out. Outside it was starting to snow, and for some reason that seemed to choke me up even more. I was rubbing my jeans and I knew I was going to slide off my base if I didn’t say something to push the silence back from that cramped room.

Would you like to stop for now? I looked at her, grateful.

Maybe, I said. That happened really fast. She nodded.

It usually does, she said. When we bottle things up for long periods of time, it takes some coaxing, but once it comes out, it comes out like your Little Fork River.

Like a Heinz bottle, I said.

Excuse me?

You know, I said. Like one of those glass Heinz ketchup bottles. You gotta bang on them to get the ketchup out and then it all comes at once and ruins whatever you were pouring it over.

Yes, she said and laughed. That’s good, Jimmy. That’s exactly what it can be like. I smiled and stared down at my scuffed boots, feeling a bit foolish and juvenile.

You know, I said. Now. Talking to you. It’s almost like he was someone I never knew in person. He’s like a story that you might read in the paper. ‘Man Dies in Vehicle Fire; Leaves Child on Riverbank.’ Nancy considered this, nodded for me to go on.

I mean, I’m no stranger to loss. My dad was really the beginning of it all. I think the permanence of dying is deceitful. In a backwards way, it really makes you think about people more than when they were alive and walking around. Her eyes widened.

Not ghosts or anything like that, I said. I just mean that…I just meant that it’s like hearing a rattle in your dashboard or something like that. Once you hear it, you can’t stop hearing it. And for me, my old man dying was the first rattle that I heard and I’ve never stopped hearing it and I think that maybe I’ve been trying to block it out ever since, but in trying to block it out, I’ve made a mess of so many things. Does that make sense? Nancy nodded.

That’s good, I said. Cause it doesn’t make any sense to me. She smiled broadly. It gave me the impression that this was going much better than she anticipated. Having come out of the system, I knew the type of people who came into this room via a parole Rolodex. I liked to think that despite all the ways that I was like those other men, I was somehow different. I’ve always felt that way, despite the glaring hypocrisy of my own actions and failed attempts at leading what most people would consider a respectable life. I liked to think that being aware of my short comings somehow justified their existence. I was a good liar. But for some reason, I didn’t feel like lying to Nancy. Outside the snow was coming down hard. Hard enough to kill the power if it held up that pace. She saw me looking and followed my gaze to the window.

Wow, she said. It’s really coming down now. I can’t believe I didn’t notice. We better wrap things up. I’ve never been comfortable driving in this. I looked at her, watched the side of her face in profile taking in the falling snow.

You’re not from Ohio? She shook her head.

No, she said. I’m from Indiana. Of course there’s no shortage of bad weather there either, but driving in the snow always made me feel… she paused, trapped I guess is the word. You’d think I learned how to drive in Florida or someplace they never really see snow, but no, I’m like someone’s grandma driving around in it. She laughed. A good-natured laugh and I really liked how honest she was; how she was not embarrassed by her admission. Her simple laugh was an inadvertent way of owning her hesitation for what most Midwesterners would have considered a cultural necessity, that necessity being an automotive mastery of the nastier elements. I appreciated her candor because I knew that she would eventually be asking a lot of questions of me that would be harder to answer—would be revealing about my own ineptitude—and somehow it relaxed me that she was making light of herself. It was a simple, unintentional gesture she made, and I accepted it. She stood up, smoothed her skirt, and walked over to her desk. She opened one of the drawers and took out a card and crossed the room back to me, handing it over.

This is my card, Jimmy. We’ll meet once a week per your obligation, but I think today went very well so if you need to call me, the number is right here. I took the card and read it.

Dr. Nancy Parsons, I said out loud. Should I call you Dr. Parsons?

No, she said. I introduced myself as Nancy because I think Dr. Parsons sounds a bit too formal. You can stick with Nancy. I stood up and offered my hand. She took it and smiled.

It was nice to meet you, Nancy.

You as well, she said. I’ll see you next week. I nodded and went out the door and onto the small landing at the top of the stairs. The space was dimly lit and there was a draft coming up the narrow stairwell. I stood outside the office door a minute longer, turning the card in my hand, and thought about the last hour. It had unsettled me, beyond the obvious outpouring of my childhood memories. Maybe unsettling was not the word. Disarming was the right word. She had disarmed me and I was reeling with the freedom of it, the lightness of being willingly vulnerable for the first time in a very long time. I was stuck there on that landing with revelations swirling around my head, each one as crisp and clean as any single snowflake dropping past her large office window on its way to a temporary rest before melting and evaporating back into a cycle. It was a foreign and jittery feeling, and I was not certain if or when I would come to terms with it. I only knew then that it was all-consuming. Finally I went down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk to wait for my ride, but I took everything from that first visit with Nancy with me, out into the cold and the snow that made her nervous.

2

Charlie was late. I was standing out in front of Bert’s. The snow was coming down hard and I stood stomping my feet with my hands in my pockets. I could hear the music inside the bar, and I thought about going in, but stayed outside because I was hoping that Nancy would come that way to get to her car. I was working through a plan if she did. I would offer to drive her home since it was snowing and that made her uncomfortable. She’d agree and maybe the topic of dinner would come up and I could cobble together the loose bills in my pocket to buy some pizza at Gino’s and maybe a pitcher of beer and she would listen to more of what I had to say and then I would drive her home and she’d ask me in for a drink and one thing would lead to another. I was thinking about what it might be like to help her out of her skirt when Charlie’s Mustang pulled alongside the curb and he reached across the seat to crank down the window. He’d been drinking already. I could tell by the way he held his head even though it had been a long time since I had seen him in that condition. Years, it had been, but mannerisms of that nature trail along with people. Age may change their appearance, but not their response to habits, and from the glassy-eyed stare he had in the buttery light of the streetlamp, Charlie’s love-hate relationship with booze was steady as ever.

You want to go inside? he yelled over the engine and the wind, pointing a finger at Bert’s front door. I turned around and looked at the fogged window of the bar, then I looked back at him. Nancy wasn’t coming.

Nah, I said. Let’s pick something up and ride around.

Right on, he said and sat back in his seat. I pulled on the car’s cold steel handle and climbed inside. The heater was barely huffing, and the cigarette smell was overwhelming in the closed space.

Jesus, Charlie, I said. You smoking five at once these days? He laughed and I rolled my window down a bit to let in some air as we pulled back onto the street. Charlie had been driving that Mustang since we were in high school. His old man had found it rotting in a barn and he had bought the thing for nothing and had it towed home. He and Charlie broke it down and put it back together one summer, and sometimes I would help them on the weekends. I knew nothing about cars, but Charlie’s dad was really good with them and he taught me a lot. He had a nice way of explaining things and he was extra patient with me because he knew all about my dad’s death. We’d spend the day under the carport, pulling things apart and cleaning them and then putting them back together. When the sun started going down, Charlie’s dad would go inside their house and come back with bottles of beer that he stuffed into an old bowling ball bag with some ice. He’d set the bag down on the garage floor and Charlie and I would get the folding chairs out and stand them up; the three of us sitting in the shade drinking beer, talking shop.

Sometimes Charlie’s mom would wander out and find us sitting there and would make a comment about Jack giving us beer, but she never seemed all that concerned about it, and never put a stop to it. None of the parents worried about that sort of thing then; the early-age drinking and excess were part of the culture, and while the women were more reluctant to accept it, they went along just the same. To do otherwise would have been a direct admonishment to their husbands, and it was the rare wife who did that without suffering some kind of consequence, whether then or delayed. A critique of the drinking, or any deviant teenage behavior, was a vicarious criticism of the father, and the hypocrisy was enough to keep them quiet and outwardly indifferent. They had married an earlier generation of their sons, after all. I was not there the day that they got everything running to where it would be street legal, but Charlie had been driving it ever since, and over time the car and Charlie’s character merged, or more accurately, they became a reflection of one another.

There were empty cans clanking around in the floorboard. I kicked at them and looked over at Charlie, who was squinting as he drove into the snow that was silently swarming the windshield as we accelerated down Columbus Street.

How long you been at it, Charlie? I said.

Been at what? I gave the cluster of cans a kick then reached down and picked one up, holding it where he could see it.

I don’t know, he said. What’s it matter? We slowed at a stop sign and I could see the scars on his face in the streetlight. The marks I could see were on his cheeks and hands and I knew there were more on the insides of his legs and on the tops of his feet. Skin grafts that always looked raw and painful, particularly in the cold weather months. They weren’t so bad in the dark, but they made him look scary in the daylight. Like he was wearing a mask that he could not take off. He’d been a good-looking kid before the accident, and if you could look past the scars you could see how badly he’d been cheated. The remnant was in the strong jawline and sharp eyes. He’d made out okay when we were little kids, but as we got older the jokes got meaner and harder to take and by the time we were in high school, working on the Mustang with his dad, he had dropped out of circulation except for me. And even now, fresh out of lock-up, I found it unsettling to spend time with him. It made me feel low, and I wanted to tell him that no one cared, but that would have been a lie, and even when he was a six-pack deep he could smell pity like it was dog shit on his boot heel. I considered saying something about his addictive personality, which was still strong and gorging on his inhibitions, but I was not really in a position to be giving anyone advice about sobriety or making good decisions. Instead, I turned around and looked into the dark back seat for the beer. There was a long gash in the leather, and I could see some of the stuffing poking through. That rip was another thing Charlie had let go. There was a time when he would have just as soon cut off his own ear than let the car fall into disrepair, but those times were distant and the old Mustang that had once been a point of pride was now little more than a means of getting from one place to the other. Almost as if it too had given up caring for its appearance and wanted nothing more than to return to the rotting barn where it was originally discovered.

You leave anything for me back here? I asked. Charlie kept his eyes forward, pulling away from a stop sign.

Hey, I said, and he looked over at me. Anything back here for me to drink? He smiled a smile I had known since we were little kids. It had charmed all the moms back then, but now looked like he was just slow, having a hard time keeping up. I let out some breath and turned back around in the seat. Pull in somewhere, man, I said. He nodded and we went on up Toledo at a crawl. The snow was blizzard-strength now and seemed to encapsulate everything like one of those globes that you shake to create a white-out. We were outside of the downtown area and the streetlights were barely visible behind us in the mirrors. His headlights strained in front of us and we almost went past the ABC store.

Here, I said loudly, and Charlie pumped the brakes hard and I could feel the wheels lock into a skid before we came to a stop. He turned the wheel to the right and the Mustang’s left front tire bumped over the curb as we pulled into the washed-out gravel lot. The store was a cinder block building with faded white paint. There was just one parked car in the lot and a small red neon sign in the window, beckoning you inside. Charlie did his best to pull the car into a space and I got out without asking him if he wanted anything. The snow was coming at me sideways and was piling into the open collar of my jacket. I ducked my head and stepped quickly toward the heavy glass front door and pulled it open. Inside, the store seemed almost as cold as the parking lot. The overhead lighting was harsh and the cheap stand-alone shelves held row after row of liquor; one whole section was dedicated to pint bottles that the factory men and the hardcore drunks who had not held a job in years liked to browse through in a slow shuffle, stuffing the bottles that were expertly designed for pockets into their coats, worn jeans, or cold weather county street department jumpsuits. The clerk was reading something at the counter, and he looked up briefly as I came in, then went back to whatever was keeping him occupied. My parole prohibited me being in the store. It was clearly written on a statement sheet that I had to sign while I was being processed. No liquor, no drugs, no consorting with criminal elements of society. Here I was again thinking that regulation and authority were not applicable to me, but the temptation of a night free from worry and the strict regulation of prison was too much to ignore.

I went around the pint bottle shelf and down another aisle, looking at the labels like I was making my way through the library. I found a bottle that I liked, tilted it off the shelf, and caught it with my free hand, then turned and walked to the counter. The clerk was still looking at his magazine. There was a crumpled-up piece of cellophane plastic next to the register and I looked down to see women spread-eagle between the two of us, their hands between their legs and expressions that spoke to the loneliest of men. There was a rack of the porno mags behind him, and I supposed that with the snow he figured he would have a slow night. And then I thought how it would not really matter if it was slow or not. He glanced up at the bottle I had placed on the counter. I’d set it down close to the magazine and he did not seem to appreciate the distraction.

Fourteen, he said. I reached into my pocket and felt the greasy cluster of bills balled in there and I thought about my plan for beer and pizza with Nancy and then tried to push her out of my head. She would not come to a place like this, not at night anyway, and not in a snowstorm. I pulled the wad out of my pocket, smoothed the bills out in my hand, and laid them on the counter. The clerk never took his eyes off the magazine. He reached for the money absently and then spared it a quick glance before ringing up the sale.

Good article? I asked. He looked at me, unamused, sliding my change across the counter.

Sure, he said. I took the bottle and went out.

I heard the music inside the Mustang from the small sidewalk in front of the store. Charlie was barely visible in the driver’s seat, but I could see that his head was back against the rest, his hands still on the wheel. Charlie. He had a way of passing out in spurts, but was always able to come alive when it was time to move to the next thing. I felt that pity for him creeping back into my head, and I pushed that away, same as the vision of Nancy colliding with the liquor store and the porn, and forced some energy into my thinking. I could follow that low feeling down a dark, empty well, or I could shrug it off, take four or five sips out of the bottle I was holding, and disguise it until the morning when the headache and gut rot would be there. In jail the nights had been the worst. Even when things quieted down it was like we were all collectively thinking the same thing. No matter what face you put on during the day, how tough you were stalking around the common rooms, the nights were the equalizer and it was almost like we had all reverted back to when we were little kids, scared of the dark and the shadows that lived beneath a simple bunk bed or in the narrow barrier of blackness between the cheap closet door and the chasm beyond. For Charlie, it seemed that everything was one long night and he dealt with it through a careless persona that cared very little about risk and even less about consequence. It was not a calculated recklessness but more of an indifference that made him vulnerable in the way that old people are vulnerable to pneumonia. There was a Springsteen line I applied to Charlie: It’s not your lungs this time, it’s your heart that holds your fate. The Boss sang this in that desperate street preacher voice coming somewhere from the ruined boardwalks of Asbury Park. Something inside of Charlie had come apart and it was like his heart had given up on pumping lifeblood; he plodded along insulated from the thoughts that preoccupy people who have a desire to be standing upright a year later. I think somewhere along the line he befriended the devil on his shoulder who constantly whispered that there was a certain peace in pursuing self-destruction and that all he had to do was push the limitations of mortality and Hell would take care of the rest. I looked through the windshield of the car at my friend—if I could even call him that now, because being a friend to Charlie was a lot more give than take. It was not selfishness. He cared too little for himself to be that. It was the consistent uncertainty and unpredictability of his actions that put the heaviest strain on his relationships—that, and of course, everything that went down before I went away.

I unscrewed the cap on the bottle and took a long pull. The liquor burned going down and it was an immediate but frightening comfort. I capped the bottle and ignored the snow that was blowing into the side of my face. I went around and opened the passenger door and climbed into the Mustang. The creak of the hinge roused Charlie and I could see that he was figuring out where he had fallen asleep. I unscrewed the cap again and took another swallow, then I handed it across to Charlie who grabbed it without looking and took a drink that was twice as long, then handed it back to me, coughing.

Nice, right? I asked. He nodded and smiled.

Thanks, Jimbo, he said. He started to put the car in reverse and stopped.

Where we going? I shrugged.

You been laid since you got out? he asked. I shook my head.

That answers that, he said.

Answers what?

Where we’re going, Charlie said and yanked the Mustang into reverse. I thought about protesting, but the determined look on his face as we pulled back onto the street made me think otherwise. I wasn’t sure if getting laid was something I wanted to do or not, but I knew arguing with him when he’d seized on an idea was an even worse alternative. We headed further out of town, passing no other cars as we drove deeper into the storm.

3

I was sitting along the bank of the Little Fork when the flashlight beam found me, shivering in the dark, my legs dangling over a rotting log. I had no sense of time, save the descending sun, which had disappeared an hour before, and the dropping temperature, so when the flashlight passed over my face, it was not relief or surprise that I felt, but a fresh flash of anger that came roaring up like a match touched to dry newsprint. I slid off the log and watched the bright eye of light widen as it grew closer. I guess that it never occurred to me that behind the approaching illumination could have been anyone with any kind of intent. I was in the woods, alone, and although I was too young to fully understand the kind of people who used that pull-off, I knew one for certain, and he had left his child down here. I felt my limbs tense and I tried to set my face into a hard expression. The light stopped about five feet from me and then the beam ran up and down my body, then shone to the left and the right of me.

Jimmy Barlow? a calm, even voice said. I stood still.