Mark Hoback: FGAQ: Very Short Stories

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 17:25:50 GMT

The Dogs

I don’t know why it started, but all of a sudden they were fighting.

I was barely awake at this hour, standing barefoot in the kitchen, trying to think of how to make coffee. Of course I know how to make coffee – it’s just hard in the mornings to get my brain going. I stand there and stare at things.

Sometimes things stare back.

The dogs. I let them out.

There is approximately half of a teaspoon of coffee left in the can, and I am really pissed off about it. Wouldn’t you be? If you use the coffee up, it is your obligation to open another can. What if your fucking wife would like a cup? Duhh. Like that’s’ never happened.

That’s just common sense, which is something I sure as shit can’t expect out of Hank. So now I’ve got a situation where I have to find a can opener and do it by myself. The dogs are making a racket outside and I am just about to get a headache. I yell for them to shut up and they do, for about half a second. I need a cigarette bad. Just as soon as I get my coffee.

Something changes in the air. The dogs are at it. There’s a saying among pit lovers, “Never trust a pit bull not to fight.” No matter how sweet and loving they may be to you, they’ve still got that aggressiveness bred into them. I hear Basher yelp and I kinda think ‘Kick his ass Bebe’. I’m just joking to myself, you know, just because Basher is Hank’s dog, and my dog is tougher. I still love Basher.

I’ve just gotten the coffee open when I hear the sound. This is real. It sounds like the dinosaurs in one of those old fifties movies. I drop the can from my hands and it fans out in brown waves across the linoleum.

Basher is hurt bad, he’s bleeding and snapping wildly at the air, trying to get a piece of Bebe but failing. Jesus. Bebe is killing him. I can’t let this happen. This is Hank’s dog. Bebe has sunk her teeth into Bashers chest and has ripped a red gash into him. Red meat.

I don’t know what to do, I grab the broom and begin to hit Bebe, yelling for her to let go, stop it, but she doesn’t even look at me. I just keep hitting her and she doesn’t even notice, she is shaking Basher, and he is looking dazed and wild, and blood is spurting from his chest, and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I’m doing and I get one of Hank’s guns, the pistol from the top of the refrigerator, and I don’t know anything about guns, just enough to release the safety. I run back outside, and my feet are covered in mud and coffee. I think I may be too late, but what can I do? I have to do something. This is Hank's dog. So I aim and close my eyes and fire and when I open them again Bebe is looking at me but not looking at me, and I am freaking because I have blown off half of her right rear paw, and amazingly she turns back to Basher and continues to slaughter him.

I am vaguely aware that Gwendolyn has wandered outside, and she is leaning against the screen door, watching with her mouth agape as I move closer, and this time with eyes wide open put a bullet into the back of Bebe’s head.

And I swear unto Jesus Christ, before she died, she looked up at me with those big orange eyes and sent me love.

March 2003

Thu, 05 Feb 2004 17:22:07 GMT

the pool house

Slam into focus. I am half floating and half staggering up these two long blocks of concrete sidewalk, and the cops are lurking there at my back. I didn’t intend to go outside, but here I am. There is a late September heat wave, sticky and foul, and I really need a cold shower. Anything to wake me up, to make me a bit more alert . I don’t remember when my last one was, and I don’t know if I want to remember. I look clean enough, from the evidence I saw in the mirror, though I’ve got the impression that I’m needing a shave. Even though I don’t recall stubble. My senses seem to be popping in and out of play. I am somewhat disturbed by my complete lack of body odor.

We have embarked on a low speed chase, a crawl. The police car, long, black and armored, is lurking only eight feet behind me, and it stays at precisely that distance from the moment the cops start the tail. I’m guessing that they started to roll within seconds from when I exited from my new front door and spilled out onto Mulberry, taking a quick left turn onto Davis.

I wouldn’t know about tracking lasers until later, but the first that I started to feel those eyes on my back was Davis Street. I turn with a jerk to suss out the scene – I don’t know that it’s the cops behind me, I just know that there’s someone’s back there. When I turn, the six o’clock sun hits me blind and square, black circles floating in my eyes and I feel hypnotized, light weight drifting. I forget my purpose.

Purpose, maybe not, maybe not… but destination, yeah. As my eyes adjust to the sunlight, I see the law just idling there, most natural thing in the world. I can’t make out features, but there are two white faces, and they are giving me this little wave that seems in no way appropriate. It’s not friendly, not hostile, just ‘yeah, we’re watching you. And we know that you see us. So? Your move.’ I stare back at them for a few seconds, and then give a half-hearted wave of my own, trying to convey ‘okay chumps, I know you’re following me and I’m not intimidated’. I’m projecting enough presence of mind, I hope, so they don’t do a stop for public intoxication. I wish I wasn’t carrying this open bottle, but putting it down now would surely be a mistake. And I’m holding, probably, at least a taste. Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, I’m just walking up the street, not even sure why I’m doing that.

And so we cruise along, outwardly composed while a blind paranoia is building up behind my eyes. I’m shifting into a state where I feel like taking off and running. My strength is pooling. It’s not that much different from being afraid of the police any other time, just a different sort of neighborhood.

I’m not thinking very clearly. I need a jolt. We come up to the corner of Second Street and Davis, and I decide to take a long deep swig off of my beer. I might as well, since I’m carrying it. I stop to pull a cigarette out of a crumpled pack. Except that the pack isn’t crumpled, and it’s primo, Marlboro Greens, not my usual generic. Is every dime gone? Drinking Heineken, too… I try to make my movements seem smooth and casual. No hard. The blow is so clean and smooth, I’ve never had anything like it. I have a feeling that I’ve been living off of Marlboro Greens and Heineken for most of this week.

I shelter the smoke with my hand, even though there isn’t so much as a breeze. It’s to send a message – ‘I’m steady. I’m cool’. In truth, I’m buying calm with every pause. I figure maybe the cops will keep on driving at this point, but they just pause and wave. When I was young they called that the Corvette wave. Nothing too involved.

It looks like it’s up to me to make the move. I’m off, quickening my pace, staying safely inside the pedestrian walking stripes, my arms starting to spread for extra balance. I am prepared to run with posture to fly, and I visualize myself leaping over small objects, mentally readying myself for the strong possibility that my patrol car may soon…

…that my car may soon take a left onto Second, and slowly fade down the street. The lady cop – I can determine her sex with the change of the angle – is impassively leaning out of the passenger window, the top two buttons of her uniform undone. She is wearing sunglasses. The off duty light is switched on just before they disappear from sight.

I slow myself down, confused. This is one hell of a long block, and I can’t honestly say that I recognize it, even though I know that I bought something here since last I slept. It would be fair to say that I wouldn’t recognize my own home at this point, but it is new, and I haven’t been through the entire place, and I haven’t even had an opportunity to form a clear picture of it in my mind. I memorize the address, even though there are no cabs. 15203 Mulberry, the odd side of the street. It’s all alien territory, all different to me. The smooth concrete has gotten progressively rougher, and the little island of grass between the sidewalk and the street has disappeared.

I have only been here in these parts for a few days and they seem to let me do whatever I want. I won. What should I recognize? I know my address. I know that less than two lengthy blocks stand between where I departed and where I stand now, but it seems like a significant distance. The houses are much smaller here, older by years, but they are still single stand-alone structures, something no one that I know can claim to own.

I am looking at the pool house. I had forgotten what it looked like. I snub my smoke and smoke again. It’s been hours. The smoke is cool, it should be hot outside but now it’s cool. I am blessed. The pool house I remember is from a fairy tale. It is a structure of whitewashed concrete blocks, set at top with points of light. Opaque glass brick take the outer wall from seven feet to ten, and then the slant of a red slate roof. This is mine. I bought it cash. I had to have it.

The house is set back at a 45 degree angle from the street, twenty yards of ragged grass and needles from the pine. The yard is vast, nearly a quarter acre. The slant backs up to 3 Street. I have a bracket two blocks long, a swath between the worlds, and words unspoken seep out of my lips, I tend to mumble. I own a bracket two blocks long. Not the center, just the crust.

The pool house. It will be in capitals. The Pool House. It will be home.

(to be continued) reprinted from Virtual Occoquan

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:33:55 GMT

The Audist

He had never really been sure of what had happened. At two, his parents considered him precocious, but his vocabulary was still too limited to provide much in the way of context.

By three, however, his gift was apparent. It was a marvelous parlor trick, one that his parents loved to display. Dad would bring him into the pub now and again, and the delighted patrons would be quick with a drink.

By the time he was five, it was apparent that his talent no longer had a place in the family’s evolving scenario. His parents resented their lack of privacy, and were also concerned that little Johnny might be wrongly perceived as a freak of nature. They worked very hard with the boy, and before long, his gift had been forgotten.

By the age of fourteen, John Parker was an emotional shipwreck. Pimpled and gawky. Slow; not stupid, but stunned. He was hearing voices, voices that seemed to have no meaningful agenda. Sometimes they would seem to be right beside him, whispering into his ear. He knew they were real.

By the age of seventeen, Jade Parker knew all that he needed to know. It was an anomaly, his talent, much like color vision in a dog. In the future, he knew that it would be the norm. There were things that were gifts, and there were things that were not. His talent was special. He could pitch his hearing. At seventeen, what a blessing this was. He could hear his sophomore date confer with her senior sister, and he could react with perfection. He learned the art of blackmail, then quickly learned it wasn’t needed.

At twenty-three he learned empathy. It was a terrible burden.

At twenty-seven it was almost unbelievable how hard he rocked. There were no sounds other than his own as the monitors gushed forth pure color.

At thirty-five he began to live a long quiet period of astonishment, alone in a cold remote region of Montana.

At forty-four he was gone, not shaken, but stirred.

March 03

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:33:32 GMT

August

Louisa could see Route 84 through a clearing in the pines, less than a hundred yards away, and that was a good thing, because at that particular point, it was only half a mile or so to Bartles Store, where she helped out two-three times a week. She had sweated right through her thin cotton dress and her hair felt plastered to her head in spite of the fact that she had it pinned, albeit carelessly.

“Ladies don’t sweat, they glow.”

She’d heard that phrase used by the wealthy ladies from Montgomery, the ones being driven through the town on their way to the seashore, driven by men who were wearing fancy suits and ties, no matter bout the heat. Men that should have been out fighting in the war, just as decent men were doing all over the country. These men looked able-bodied. What were they doing in those big air-conditioned cars, seeming like they didn’t have a care in the world. Her girlfriend Gloria had ridden in one of these cars at a funeral procession last summer and had described it as ‘heaven’.

All the good men were long gone out of Monroeville, nothing left but the old and the infirm and the crazies, not a damn one worth talking to. The war was taking them all, and fair or not, too large a number would not be coming back. Including her husband, who wasn’t worth mourning for, but still deserved better than dying without glory – pneumonia! – in Guadalcanal. Well, she was better off without him anyway, maybe not financially, but still better off. Still had her looks and no young-uns to weigh her down. She could make a new start if the men ever did come back.

It was far too hot to smoke, but Louisa nonetheless pulled out a crooked Picayune from her wrinkled pack. Damn humidity. The striking surface of her matchbox was too moist for the match to ignite, so she picked up a stone and used that to light up. Picayunes were strong as horse manure and caused a spinning in the head that she sometimes liked, and now as she moved off the dirt road and onto 84, the heat rising from the asphalt made her feel as if she were swimming, and the cigarette fell from her hand. She paused a moment and crushed it with her heel, and then rolled her shoe over it angrily, reducing it to shards, then to nothing. It was far too hot to smoke.

All that mattered now was making it to Bartles and drinking a cold Royal Crown Cola. That kept her feet moving. Sweat was burning in her eyes – if this was glowing, she was positively iridescent. Alabama in August was hell if you didn’t even have a truck, if you didn’t even have a friend to ride you to the store. She had a truck but it was long time broke. She had a friend, but her friend didn’t have a truck, nor much of her senses left, and so she walked. It would be all right soon. She would be drinking a RC and standing by the big floor fan, and she would stay at Bartles until someone – even an old one or a crazy one – could give her a ride back to her shack. Should have never left the house, but she got so restless. Summer couldn’t end soon enough.

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:13:57 GMT

Finder's Fee

It’s a gig, workin for the devil, gotta have a gig, gotta pay the rent. Trouble is, it’s a crowded field nowdays, lotta competition rounding up those souls. Got to keep on your toes, keep your eyes open, know where to nose around.

Like this hot shot Clancy, been keeping tabs on him for months now, waiting for him to ripen. The Big Guy doesn’t like it when you try to bring ‘em in under-developed. Not only do you lose your finder’s fee, you can lose your job entirely if it happens too frequently.

Clarence O’Hardy, known as Clancy on the streets, dumb, lard-ass Irish bastard with a whole lot of luck, he had a good heapin helping of six outta seven of the deadly sins. Just throw in Sloth and he woulda had a perfect score. But Clancy wasn’t lazy, nah, never could call him that, sucker put in a lotta hours at the mill, and made it damn near to the top of the particular shit-hole called the Glyson Corporation. Lot of luck, like I said, but a lotta hard work, too.

Now six deadly sins, granted, that sounds like a lot of sins, but you gotta take into account the overall balance of things, and this particular son of a bitch also managed to hang on to five of the goddamn heavenly virtues – Fortitude, Charity, Justice, Faith and Hope. Screw Prudence and Temperance, not in Clancy’s lifetime, but you can see my dilemma. Six sins, five virtues, just too close to call. Break-even. Believe me, I been in this business a long time, and it’s always the close ones that’ll come around to bite you in the ass.

The way I see it, the way I know it, is we either gotta add a sin or lose a virtue. I been on a long dry spell, so it’s tempting, ya know, it is tempting, but what can I say that hasn’t been said before. The guy just wasn’t ripe.

Okay, forget about Sloth, like I said. No reason to dwell on it, somethin like that just doesn’t happen over night. The virtues, though, maybe I can help along, nudge things on a little bit. That’s fair. No laws against that, and if there were, well, a man’s gotta make a living.

You can’t just give a fellow a hot-foot, you know what I mean, piss’m off and then accuse him of Anger. Wish you could. Would make my life one hell of a lot easier. So I gotta work on the virtue side of this proposition, cause in my experience – and like I said, I’ve spent considerable time in the business – it’s easier to give up a virtue than it is to develop a vice. Just the nature of things.

I’m gaming on Hope. Hope and Faith, they’re a lot alike when you think about it, with one big difference. Faith isn’t based on the tangible world, it's kind of an abstract thing, that Faith. And I’ve never done quality work in that particular neighborhood, so I don’t feel like stretchin now, not with all the competition breathin down my collar, leave it alone. Hope, I mean, shit, that’s based on just opening those peepers and takin a look around. So I’m banking on Hope.

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 01:15:10 GMT

The main thing I like about having trashed my blog is that I can totally rework it in order to put myself in the best possible light . I can be brilliant in this space, from here on out. All the crap I posted in the past, it's gone, nada.

And the good stuff?

I post it back in categories (been readin'), but slowly, casually, like re-hanging pictures tossed by an earthquake.

A year ahead of myself.