'The Dylan Project'

Photo credit: Hein Boekhout

By Megan Cassidy Hall

Josh Barrett was typically cool under pressure. In fact, he considered this to be his defining quality. It was this same unflappable charm that allowed him to bluff his way through high school and date nearly anyone he desired. However, after graduation a mere eight days prior, he found himself thrust out into the real world to search for a job. And this may have explained why, for the first time in his life, Josh Barrett was anxious.

Josh looked about the austere room, waiting for the interviewer to return and trying to convince himself there was no reason to be nervous. After all, he rationalized, the head-hunter had called him. But then again, Josh knew, there had to be a host of other candidates with more experience. At this thought, his heart beat erratically and his palms began to sweat. He might have experienced a full-blown panic attack, but just then the interviewer, an older, startlingly handsome man by the name of Alex Green, came back into the room.

During the first portion of the interview, Green’s good looks and intense gaze had unnerved the young man. However, the researcher’s demeanor now seemed drastically altered as he smiled and handed Josh a cup of coffee. Josh noted with pleasure that the cup was ceramic instead of the usual paper or Styrofoam, and this small gesture of permanence immediately calmed the young man’s nerves. He flashed Green his usual charismatic smirk. The interview process may have been rigorous, but the job was clearly his.

“Well, Josh,” Green began, “we’ve finished the initial questions, and I can say with some certainty that we’ll be asking you to stay.”

Josh smiled slightly so as not to appear too eager. Green mirrored the gesture, “Just sign these confidentiality forms, and we can tour the facility.”

Josh filled out the paperwork and followed his new employer down a sterile white corridor. “This is our inception room,” Green pointed to an area filled with tubes. “These days, it’s merely monitored to guarantee everything keeps running smoothly.”

“I wouldn’t be working here then?” Josh sighed. He thought he could fake it, but he had no experience and had copied off a girlfriend to pass his last few science courses.

Green gave him an odd look, but continued walking, “Of course not. Only a few lab techs work here. This part of the process was finalized nearly forty years ago. Research began long before that with the Adam model, but the Adams had a defect written into the original coding. Most weren’t able to last more than ten years.”

As they stepped into an elevator, Green continued, “The Bryans came twelve years later. They lasted, but there were slight flaws in the replication process, so only a few sets of Bryans were created. A few years later, the process was entirely perfected in the Caleb models.”

Josh interrupted, “And what will my role be?” His previous job had involved selling insurance. Before that, he worked in a mailroom. He’d been fired from both positions and wanted to seem interested in this job, even though he was already tiring of Green’s speeches.

“We’ll get to that,” Green grumbled. “As I was saying, the Calebs were a bit too perfect. At that point, we were unable to alter physical characteristics without changing major genetic sequencing, and the Calebs were far too unique for mass production. So, the line was terminated, though for obvious ethical reasons, the company did not recall the models.”

They arrived at a windowed room. Turning toward it, Josh looked into a nursery with three identical infants lying in three identical cribs. Green smiled warmly at the babies squirming in their tiny beds and whispered, “It’s a two-way mirror, so they’re not distracted by any outside visitors. This is our Dylan Project. The female equivalent, the Diane Project, produces models monitored by our sister facility.”

Green straightened his lab coat, “The Dylans have proven to be most satisfactory—not as bright or handsome as the Calebs, but with average intelligence and easily adjustable features, they blend into a crowd. Wonderful for long-term production.”

“And you’ve been getting away with this for decades?” Josh probed.

“Well,” the researcher opened a door leading into a room of screens monitoring the infants’ movements, “cloning was controversial in the early days.”

“And banned now,” Josh snorted.

Green turned away from the monitors and glared, “Banned by private enterprises, yes. But, our company has full government backing and conducts research under strict ethical guidelines.”

“You’re not organ harvesting then?” Josh asked.

This time, it was Green’s turn to smirk, “Of course you would think of that. No, Mr. Barrett. We are not organ harvesting. Nor are we creating soldiers for a secret militia, or treating the clones like bodies without souls.”

Josh opened his mouth, but Green continued, “I know. I’ve been calling them models. They are that, but more importantly, they are individuals, which is the very basis of our research. For example, I myself am a Caleb.  It is rare that one of us returns to the company, but it can happen.  Like my adoptive parents, I developed an interest in the sciences, and like the other Caleb models, I possess a high level of intelligence.”

Green led Josh back to the office. Once seated, the researcher pointed to a stack of folders on his desk. “The Dylans have been in production for about 40 years and most live normal everyday lives. For example,” he lifted a sealed manila envelope, “Dylan 32.1 was the first of two children born his year. He is now Samuel Prendergast, an active eight-year-old living in Iowa. He enjoys baseball and reading, just like his father.”

He held another file, “This is Dylan 20.2, the second of two babies born in his year. He was placed with his twin, Dylan 20.1. Both boys have embraced their mother’s love of music, and have taken lessons since childhood. Dylan 20.2 has a gift for stringed instruments and studies musical theory.”

“Then your work here is philanthropic? You’re just a specialized adoption agency?” Josh tried not to sound annoyed. He’d rather harvest organs than do something this foolishly sentimental.

“The philanthropic side of our work is secondary,” Green sipped his coffee. “Our primary goal is psychobiological research. We study abnormalities. I’m sure you’re familiar with the work of Sir. Francis Galton?”

Josh nodded and was displeased when he saw Green bemusedly purse his lips together. “Ah, well, to refresh both of our memories, Galton was an early genetics researcher who discovered that twins offer a unique way to distinguish genetic traits from those traits developed through nurture and the special circumstances of our lives,” he paused. “Do you understand now?”

The question seemed slightly condescending, as it was most likely intended to be. Josh spoke slowly, trying to appear thoughtful, “So, this is similar to the studies done before they cured schizophrenia? The ones where they studied twins, one with schizophrenia and one without?”

Green beamed in acknowledgement, “Quite so! The Bryan model was considerably valuable in discovering the cure, in point of fact. Our company’s sole aim is to study nature versus nurture. We have identical genetic material placed in homes throughout the world. To prevent flooding the market, we only create two to three children every other year, trading off opposite years with the Dianes. And, as I mentioned previously, we change the physical sequencing so the clones do not appear identical. Though genetic duplicates, the children have surface variations in skin tone, hair, and facial features.”

“And how are they monitored once they leave?” Josh wondered.

“Cameras,” Green waved a hand about his head. “There are so many these days. And we employ field researchers—not parents, of course as that would taint the study, but teachers, neighbors, even employers, once the children reach maturity.”

“And you’re the ones who cured schizophrenia?”

“Yes. We study other things as well—anything that could be either genetic or influenced by outside factors. It’s fascinating work. For example, on the whole, the Dylans have a propensity to be personable and easy-going. So, when we have one who becomes a cut-throat CEO, we examine how his upbringing may have influenced him.”

“Or if one develops cancer at an early age?”

“Precisely,” Green slapped the desk. “We’ve produced exactly forty eight Dylans. To date, none have cancer, even with high-risk environmental factors such as smoking.”

“Age could be a factor,” Josh supplied, trying to play the valuable team member.

“Which is why this is a longitudinal study with built in control groups. Will some develop cancer, or is there something in the Dylan’s genetic sequencing, which provides natural immunity? Can we replicate that immunity? If some develop Alzheimer’s as they age, what environmental factors can we correlate with the disease, and how can we eliminate those factors? That’s what we’re doing here.”

“And you’ve really never had any incidence of cancer,” Josh attempted to sound impressed, even though he felt bored.

“No. We’ve never had a Dylan with cancer, or any kidney or liver dysfunctions. We’ve had a few suffer from slight depressive episodes, but none with major depression, bipolar disorder, or sociopathic tendencies,” Green paused, “until now…  and here we come to your role in our project, Mr. Barrett.”

Josh was glad they had finally come to the point. He swallowed his irritation and flashed Green a charmingly toothy grin, “My role? Do you need another field researcher to follow someone?”

“Quite the contrary, though you do have a propensity for following people, Dylan 10.3.”

“What?” Josh gripped the chair, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. For the second time in his life, his palms began to sweat.

Green pulled a file from his desk, “We want to know… what went wrong.”

He began reading, “Age seven, the subject sets his mother’s cat on fire. Cat goes missing. Dylan 10.3 is not suspected.”

He flipped to another entry, “Age nine, Dylan 10.3 bullies female classmate until she is forced to transfer schools. Parents contacted. No other actions taken.”

Flip. “Age fourteen, female classmate accuses Dylan 10.3 of rape. The school gets involved. No official charges filed. The subject is allowed to continue high school undisturbed.”

Flip. “Age seventeen, Dylan 10.3 strangles his girlfriend and disposes of her body.”

Here, Green flopped the folder onto the desk in front of Josh. Pictures, apparently taken with a satellite camera, clearly showed Josh’s hunched over form as he shoved a blonde corpse into the trunk of his car.

“It’s been almost a year, and the girl’s parents are still looking for her,” Green said.  “We’re looking for an explanation.” Green looked over Josh’s head, and the young man realized there were three others behind him—one in a lab coat identical to Green’s, two carrying weapons. Josh’s mind was racing. He fell silent, trying to control himself.

The tactic must have worked because after a few moments, his breathing eased.  He shrugged nonchalantly, “That’s not me.”

Josh moved as if to leave, but the guards behind him moved in as Green pointed to a photo in which the young man’s face was clearly visible, “Let us not lie to one another, Josh,” he said. “I’ve told you everything that goes on here—very top secret stuff, and there’s nowhere for you to run. We’re doing research here, as I said. Just tell us exactly what happened.”

Josh licked his lips, his eyes darting from side to side looking for an exit. He thought that perhaps Green did only want him there for research purposes. Perhaps he would be free from any repercussions. He might as well be frank, given the fact that there seemed no alternative. With this in mind, Josh leaned back in his chair and answered coolly, “Linda was a lying cheating idiot who got what she deserved.”

Green’s lips formed a thin white line. “Then, you claim that it was Miss. Evans who precipitated the attack?”

Josh rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Still trying to seem relaxed, he could feel a drips of sweat beginning to trickle down the back of his neck as Green leaned forward, “And, what of the childhood incidents?”

This question was met with a harsh laugh and another shrug, “Well, those are just the kind of sticky situations every guy finds himself in now and again.”

“Many men, are violent,” Green acknowledged, “but our Dylan models are typically friendly and easygoing. Was there any history of abuse or neglect we may have overlooked?”

Even though Josh’s heart had begun beating wildly, he blinked twice, removed all trace of emotion from his face, and simply replied, “No.”

Green made a note, “It would be difficult to detect lying with your personality, so I will unfortunately have to take your word for it. Typically, we would know about and prevent any maltreatment, but we have been known to make mistakes.”

When Green was greeted with more silence, he pressed further, “Now, this incident with Miss. Evans. In your mind, precisely how did she provoke the attack?”

“She lied to me,” Josh’s chest began heaving with ragged breaths, “and she slept with the captain of the baseball team, and the sensation of my hands around her neck was the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life, if you really want to know.”

 “You note the lack of shame or remorse,” Green said to his colleague.

The other researcher nodded and placed three additional photos on the desk, “Which is why we do not believe this to be an isolated incident.”

“I didn’t kill anyone else!” Josh shouted, completely dropping his cool façade.

“Only because our field researchers began monitoring you twenty-four hours a day since the first incident,” Green interrupted, pointing to the first two photos. “When you stalked and attempted to assault this young woman in the park last month, we surreptitiously intervened moments before the attack.”

Josh’s mind reeled as he recalled following the same path as the slim jogger for months, planning how to approach her in just the right way to seem both menacing and friendly.  Just as he had run up behind her, a second jogger had come around the corner calling out, “Sarah, I think you dropped your wallet back here.” 

Startled, Sarah had turned around, only to see Josh a few inches from her face.  She jumped back in surprise and Josh knew she would always remember what he looked like.  She would be on guard and he would not have the chance to surprise her again.  He tried to control his anger at the realization that his carefully laid out plans had been thwarted by these low little men in their ugly white coats. 

“Interesting,” the other researcher said, turning to Green.  “You see now that he is finally showing some emotion, though he tries to hide it.”

“Anger born of selfishness,” Green nodded as his colleague made a notation.  He turned back to Josh, “This,” Green tapped the final photo “is one of our researchers, posing as a decoy. You have trailed her movements for the past two weeks, just as we have trailed yours.”

Green’s colleague cleared his throat and added, “One is an isolated incident. Two is a coincidence. Three is a serialized pattern.”

“I’m not…” Josh jumped to his feet, but one of the armed guards firmly pressed him back down into his chair.

“As I explained previously,” Green stood, “above all else, our process is ethical. We must discover what brought on this abnormality in personality and psyche. If it is not environmental, it must be physical. The other two young men of your birth year have shown none of these symptoms or behaviors but are becoming, like our other Dylans, happy productive members of society. You are, Mr. Barrett, a clone who appears to be entirely unique.”

Josh smirked at this, but his face fell as Green continued, “And that is why we have chosen to terminate your program.”

“You’re going to kill me?” Josh felt his bladder give way.

“No. Of course not,” Green said, as the two security agents lifted Josh to his feet. “As I said before, you’ll be staying here.”

Josh roared in both terror and fury, “You’ve got the photos! Why not just send me to prison?”

“Ah, but then we wouldn’t have any tissue samples,” Green answered, as if this were obvious. He inclined his head toward his colleague, “Dr. Albert has never performed a lobotomy, as they have not been standard practice for quite some time, but we believe this form of tissue extraction to be sufficient, both to control your behavior and to conduct our research.”

Josh began flailing his arms and legs, trying to strike his captors. He felt his fist make contact with Green’s jaw and felt a momentary surge of adrenaline. But then a long syringe was thrust into his arm, and his knees went weak as he was lowered onto a waiting gurney.

Green stood over his prisoner, “We’ll have to keep you for observation, but you shouldn’t be too much trouble. When we need more tests or further samples, I’m sure your new, sedentary, infantile personality will happily comply.”

The drugs had nearly alleviated the last remnants of Josh’s anxiety, but then just before falling into a hazy, drug-induced sleep, he heard Green say the last words he would ever fully comprehend, “Dr. Albert, procure as much tissue as necessary, as long as he stays alive. If he wakes up during the procedure, which he certainly will, don’t give him any further sedation. You saw the pictures.”

Screaming, Josh fell into oblivion.

Megan Cassidy Hall is the author of Smothered, The Misadventures of Marvin Miller, and Always, Jessie. She is also the co-owner of 50/50 Press. You can follow her on Twitter @MeganEileenC. 

To submit an original work of fiction to Writer's Bone, visit our submissions page. 

Original Fiction Archives

‘Swell’

Photo credit: Dave Johnson

By Conor White-Andrews

He has already seen the two lifeguards looking. He has seen them glaring, and he can see Oscar—his brown skin dark against the turquoise-grey swell—waving at him irritatedly, further along in the water, scowling and shouting something inaudible. They had entered the water together—he, Oscar, and Juan—but now Charlie is at least thirty metres away, alone, away from the other swimmers. The beach is quieter today because of the incoming storm, a fraction of the usual crowd, and there are very few people in the sea. The waves are three or four times their normal size, but still, Charlie is alone, away from the other swimmers, struggling against the current. It is for this reason that the lifeguards are looking.

They are wearing electric, luminous yellow polo shirts, which have, Charlie knows, the word “socarista,” (lifeguard) printed in red letters across the back. They are also wearing red shorts that stop halfway down their deeply tanned legs and plastic mirror sunglasses and one of them, the one on the left, is holding a long, red float attached to a white string that has been tied around his waist. The man is holding the red float up by one hand and looking at Charlie and now the other people on the beach are watching him too. A situation has developed, and Charlie is not sure how.

But it is real, this situation, and Charlie has lost control. His companions are already leaving the water, now even further along, treading back along the sand towards the others, and Charlie is in a spot. The current has moved him toward the rocks at the far side of the beach, and the waves, three or four times their usual size, are too strong. They are crashing down from exceptional heights, seemingly two at a time, and pulling him underwater. His eyes are stinging because of the salt and he cannot wipe them because his arms, already exhausted from his limp efforts at fighting the current, are busy keeping him up. Beneath him he can feel the hard, sharp faces of rocks, and the thought of sea urchins, of black needles delicately puncturing the paper-white soles of his feet, is as bad as that of his skull being suddenly, violently forced down against the stone. His green swimming shorts have come undone and are slipping down. With one hand he is wildly, uselessly grabbing at his crotch. The waves are unrelenting against his face, in his eyes, and he is spluttering, coughing up water.

On the beach, there are maybe thirty people watching. They are standing there, hands at their hips. Later, in conversation, Charlie will say how eager—how keen—the lifeguard was to enter the water, suddenly tearing off his yellow polo shirt to expose his dark, sculpted chest and dashing through the waves towards him. He looks amused when he arrives, his green eyes taunting Charlie, laughing at the pale English boy in the water. His hand grips Charlie’s left arm and it hurts, being dragged back to the shore with the salt stinging his eyes. His right hand holding up the green shorts that cover his penis. Later, he will say that it was unnecessary, that he was fine. But in the moment, he is content to be saved.

He keeps saying, in Spanish, that he didn’t know there were rocks. He says thank you very much, but that he didn’t know there were rocks. He says this—tells himself this—in order to add reason: he was swimming too close to the rocks and this is why the lifeguard had intervened. If somebody is swimming too close to the rocks, then the lifeguards must do something. It is as simple as that.

And this is what he tells his friends, back on the sand, once the lifeguard with the green eyes has shoved him off and his friends gather around him. I didn’t know there were rocks, he splutters, not meeting any of their eyes. He doesn’t look, but he knows that Oscar is shaking his head and that Juan is bent forward laughing. He is laughing so hard that there is hardly any sound, only a high-pitched squeaking. Beside his friends—who are Spanish and brown—Charlie is an unhealthy white. When they go back to the edge of the water, to sit down in the damp sand and let the turquoise-grey waves wash up around them, Charlie returns to his towel. His towel is at the top of the beach where the sand is fine and dry, and he brushes off the edges before sitting down.

He knows that there are still people watching—laughing at the stupid guiri pallido in his green shorts—and that the lifeguards, now back together, keep glancing back at him and grinning, giggling. A whole beach of people, though fewer than usual because of the incoming storm, is laughing at his expense.

On his towel, he lies down on his back. While the sky was gray and overcast when they arrived, walking slowly down the beach from Oscar’s house, there are now vast patches of crisp blue and white sunlight burning over the sand. They have been saying that the storm, la tormenta, will arrive tomorrow for three days now, but again, it will not be today. Perhaps it will be tomorrow. Lying on his back, Charlie closes his eyes. The sun is hot on his skin, and soon he will begin to burn.

Conor White-Andrews is based out of London. Follow him on Twitter @ConrWA.

To submit an original work of fiction to Writer's Bone, visit our submissions page. 

Original Fiction Archives

'Fire and Ice'

(Photo credit: Dagmar Nelson)

By Anne Leigh Parrish

They sat on six acres, so there was plenty of room. And since getting laid off, he had plenty of time. When the cement plant was hiring again, he’d gotten a phone call from Dodd, his supervisor there for more than fifteen years. Clarence said no thank you, he was doing just fine in retirement. Sandy needed a second cup of coffee for that one. Clarence was forty-seven years old. Who the hell retires at forty-seven? Especially with five years left on the mortgage and the salary from her job with the school district not exactly plush?

Sandy’s mother advised her to button her lip.

“The man’s in bad shape,” she said.

Sandy knew all about his bad shape. The hunting accident had happened more than four years before, but Clarence was in those damned woods every day, walking silently as he’d been taught to do by his own father, waiting for the buck, holding perfectly still, taking his time, then very gently squeezing the trigger of the 30.06. Poor Lucas had to get his ass in the line of fire at the wrong moment. Well, not his ass, his left arm, which was probably better since he was right-handed. Not that he used either hand for anything gainful, living off his little sister his whole adult life. Lucas was in the hospital for a while, learning how to deal with a shattered humerus, enjoying the morphine and the kindly touch of his nurses.

Really, he’d taken the whole thing a lot better than Clarence had. Lucas was proud of his arm’s gnarly surgical scar, even of its shrunken muscles, and the way it dangled by his side while he gestured wildly with the other one.

No matter how many times Sandy told Clarence that things could have been a whole lot worse, because after all Lucas was alive and well, he got all dark and distant.

And then the lay-off came. While Sandy put pencil to paper and figured out how they were going to make it on his unemployment and her salary, Clarence sat in front of the television set with the sound off, his feet on the coffee table, arms folded across his round stomach. When he looked up from the screen, he seemed not to recognize his surroundings.

He needed to pull out of himself. So it was ironic that the vehicle for that action was Lucas, the one who’d shoved him down inside in the first place.

Lucas had a car with a bad carburetor. He’d rebuilt it four times already with no luck. Maybe his funky arm and hand made the job a failure, maybe it was because he’d always been a few bricks short of a load anyway, but he just couldn’t get it to work. So Clarence told him they’d go out to the junk yard and look for the kind of car he had, a 1980 Buick Le Sabre.

The junkyard was under new management. Clarence didn’t know Foster had sold out. The boy behind the counter told him so. Not much of a boy, really, at well over six-feet with the tattoo of a dagger on his forearm. What threw Clarence, but not so much Lucas because Lucas had had a bunch of weirdness in his life, was that the guy was knitting a baby sweater with tiny needles. Doing it well, too, as far as Clarence could tell. Sandy was an occasional knitter. The boy, Glen, explained that his wife was expecting and had wanted to knit a bunch of sweaters, hats, and booties for the coming winter but had very bad arthritis, the kind you get when you’re a kid, so Glen said he’d learn and do it for her. His mother showed him how, and then asked him flat out if he had a thing in general for girlie stuff.  He wasn’t offended. It seemed like a fair question. He liked to knit, he realized, but it made him reluctant to handle auto parts, on account of the grease and grime, so the customers did their own picking and carrying.

Clarence digested this information and said what he was looking for. Glen nodded. The GMs were in row three, more or less. His father—the new owner—had been trying to get the place organized. That guy Foster had had a screw loose when it came to keeping order, but then that made sense, didn’t it, owning a junkyard. Get it, screw loose? Old cars? Glen put his knitting in his lap and laughed until his face turned red and his eyes watered. Clarence had to hand it to him. Being able to crack yourself up was a worthy talent.

Clarence and Lucas made their way down the wide, dusty row. The drought was in its fourth month. Burns, Oregon was naturally dry anyway, and now it was even drier. Clarence wanted to move somewhere wet, with sixty inches of rain a year, like the Olympic Peninsula, maybe, or the east side of any island in Hawaii. He used to have quite a thing for geography when he was a kid. He’d picked up a lot from his mother’s old books. He didn’t figure he’d be able to talk Sandy into moving. She didn’t love her job, but she was dedicated to it. She was the secretary for the whole school district. Okay, it had maybe four hundred students in it, but someone had to keep all the paperwork straight, and that was her.

After forty-five minutes no Le Sabre was to be had, so they took the carburetor out of a Monte Carlo instead. Although the Le Sabre had a bigger engine, a V-8 versus a V-6, Lucas was pretty sure the carb would work. And it did. Lucas was delighted.

Clarence wasn’t. He was agitated. Something had woken up inside him, and wasn’t being at all quiet about it. He’d never been one to believe much in second chances, but his was staring right at him. He wanted to bring old cars back to life, thereby bestowing a second chance upon them too.

Sandy said a hobby was fine, a hobby was good, as long as it didn’t end up costing them a lot of money. Clarence removed his baseball cap and scratched the back of his head. Clearly, the thought of money hadn’t occurred to him. Salvage cars were cheap, not free. He begged her to take a closer look at the books and see if there a little funny money he could have. Sandy brewed another pot of coffee and stood, listening to it drip. Clarence had three more months of unemployment coming. He could use half of it. That was the best she could do.

The first was a 1975 Camaro. He got his buddy, Brewster, to tow it home for free. Brewster didn’t have much to tow in the summer. Winter was when everyone broke down or skidded into ditches, so he glad for something to do.

The wreck itself only set Clarence back seventy-five dollars. In good condition, the car would have been a collector’s item, but it was missing both bumpers and the passenger seat. And the radio. And the back lights. It lacked a windshield, too. Clarence listed all these drawbacks in his head while he circled it lovingly on the dead swath of grass where Sandy once had had a flower garden.

Every morning he was up to beat the midday heat. He took things off and put them back on. He went again and again to the junkyard, prowled the rows looking for what he needed. Sometimes he found it. Usually he didn’t. Glen was still knitting. He’d stopped making baby clothes, and was now working on a scarf for his dad.

After a week and a half, Clarence gave up on the Camaro and was jonesing for a sweet little Ford Galaxy. It had no steering wheel, but the leather seats were intact. So were two of its whitewall tires. The paint must once have been red. It was impossible to tell. He got it for a song because Glen had just taken a phone call from his wife. His side of the conversation made it clear that some medical issue had come up, and he was clearly worried. He let the Galaxy go for fifty.

By the first week of September, roughly nine weeks from the time the first injured car had made its appearance on their property, there were six rusting carcasses outside Sandy’s kitchen window. Clarence spent every daylight hour, even in the heat, under them, inside them, on top of them, poking, prodding, in an obscene display of affection that bordered on sexual.

There was fire in his eyes, and a cool steadiness in his hands. Even the way he sat on the porch when the day was done and watched the sun sink beyond the distant rise spoke of man standing firmly in the center of his own heart.

After another week, Sandy was back at work, using the ancient computer system to update enrollment records, vaccination records, absenteeism among both students and teachers, and the roster of licensed substitutes. Then she met with the head of the PTSA, a toad of a woman named Emeline Dorn, about her plans for fall fundraising. This was an annual headache, because residents of Harney County weren’t exactly knee-deep in riches. Bake sales, rummage sales, and sending a troupe of six-graders door to door with a canned speech about needing to buy new sports equipment (when the district really needed to invest in technology) were going to produce about the same number of dollars that year as in all the years before, somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and fifty. Emeline really wished Sandy could be a little more enthusiastic. Sandy suggested Emeline consult with the principal, Alvin Crockett. Alvin’s father-in-law owned the local radio station. Sandy made this suggestion every year, and Emeline acted upon it every year, and every year the principal’s wife wrote a check for over a thousand dollars just to make her go away.

In the middle of the second week of school the new high school science teacher was accused of inappropriately touching Marla Mayvins on the buttocks. The teacher was a young man, in his late twenties, and Marla was fourteen going on thirty. The usual hysterical uproar ensued, and he was put on leave without pay, pending an investigation. Sandy was reminded again how little true justice there was in this world. She’d crossed paths with Marla a number of times over the years because her attendance was so spotty and her mother had no interest in urging Marla to get up in the morning and get on the damned school bus. Why Marla had gone to school that particular day, when the science teacher, Roy Randall, was supposed to have goosed her, was proof that the thread holding all things together was unfair, corrupt, and basically stupid.

It was this sour mood that Sandy returned home to find that Clarence’s latest acquisition was blocking her access to the driveway. She had four bags of groceries to unload. She found him around back, sitting on an iron bench he’d also brought home from the junkyard, drinking a diet Coke, and staring happily into space. He offered to carry the bags in for her, if that would help. What would help is if he got rid of some these useless relics, called Dodd, and went back to work. The merry light in his eyes turned cold. He was sorry she’d had a bad day, but that was no reason to take out her problems on him.

You and those fucking cars are my problem, she almost said. Keeping those words to herself was the most painful thing that had befallen her in a long time. She wished then that she had developed a taste for liquor.

Glen’s baby was born and he took time off to help his wife at home. He told Clarence to take whatever he wanted from the yard, that they’d settle accounts later. Clarence and Brewster transported four more cars and parts of cars, particularly tires which Clarence had become attached to. Sandy’s yard looked like its own salvage operation, and she told Clarence he should go into business for himself. He didn’t understand. He didn’t bring the cars home so he could resell them. He had them to work on. Only he didn’t work on them the way he had. He seemed to have come to the end of his already limited expertise. Sandy said he should look for work at a service station. Maybe one of the guys there could teach him about cars. They were certified mechanics, right? Clarence couldn’t possibly mix commerce with art. He hoped she understood. Fine, she said, then call Dodd and see if he’ll still take you back. Clarence wasn’t ready for Dodd, either.

Another day, Sandy came home to find Clarence welding car parts together. He’d been a welder when he was younger, and still knew his stuff. As to what he was making, he couldn’t really say. There was just something so beautiful about how the metal could come alive under the heat, bonded, and become something else entirely. Sandy felt like she was losing her mind. Roy Randall, the science teacher, had been let go, and Marla Mayvins was playing the downtrodden but plucky victim for all it was worth.

She didn’t mean to break down and cry, because she wasn’t a crier. But it was just too much. She needed him to help, to earn some money, it didn’t matter how. Would he possibly think of selling his pieces? She knew people who did that. One of the English teachers at school crocheted hats for cats. She posted pictures on the Internet, and people actually bought them. The cats looked cute with their ears all bundled up. Clarence realized she was coming unglued, and brewed a nice strong pot of coffee. As she sat, huddled, still sobbing quietly, he regretted that he wasn’t a drinking man.

The weather turned cold. Clarence gave up working on the cars, and longed for a large, heated garage. What would it set them back to build one? Sandy didn’t answer. The set of her chin said he should probably not bring it up again.

The day that Clarence’s last unemployment check arrived, it snowed for the first time that season. Gorgeous fat flakes drifting all around. Sandy usually loved snow and how cozy it made their home feel. Now their home was a trap, with Clarence always in it, doing nothing but silently wishing for what he couldn’t have.

She supposed it was inevitable, really. She’d read cases of people who’d reach the end and become desperate. The spare gas container they kept out back had just about three gallons in it, which was plenty to douse all the cars, and parts of cars. She was careful not to get any on the tires and pulled them out of reach because she didn’t want to smell burning rubber. She also moved the welding equipment, which might have some future value. Clarence had fallen asleep in front of the television when she went out in the twilight with the matches in her pocket. For a moment she wondered if the flames would reach the house, and if so, would she wake Clarence up and drag him to safety?

The noise, smell, and dancing light woke him up. He stood beside her, with his hands to his head saying, what the fuck, what the fuck? She told him to shut up and appreciate how pretty it was, the flames and snowfall, like some ancient scene or reckoning. A true clash of opposites, she said. Fire and ice. Does that make sense? She asked. He could find no words at the moment, though he agreed wholeheartedly that it made complete and perfect sense.    

Anne Leigh Parrish is an author based out of Seattle, Wash., and recently published her first novel What Is Found, What Is Lost. To learn more about the author, visit her official website, like her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter @AnneLParrish. Also read her short story "Smoke" or check our interview, In the Business of Fiction: 11 Questions With Author Anne Leigh Parrish.

To submit an original work of fiction to Writer's Bone, visit our submissions page. 

ORIGINAL FICTION ARCHIVE

'Goodbye, Buster Bucheit'

Photo credit: Tim Hetrick

By Gary M. Almeter

Buster Bucheit died on May 20, 1980, the 199th day of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Arnold’s Little League team had been slated to have a game that evening and had to forfeit when neither Buster, nor his son Chuck, showed up. Arnold went home that evening, turned on the news and saw a poster board, rudimentary by today’s standards, which said “Day 199” behind John Chancellor’s right shoulder. Arnold thought the numbering odd, more like the price of a Broyhill recliner on “The Price is Right” than a standard by which people measured days. 

Iranian militants had nothing to do with Buster’s demise, nor did any of the other international skullduggeries or domestic crises that peppered that era. Buster was not a character in Watergate or ABSCAM and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, had never met Jim Jones. Buster’s death was an accident, insofar as no one was ever criminally charged or civilly sued. Arnold always suspected that Buster, a man he genuinely liked, was more likely than not the victim of something more nefarious than mere negligence but something falling below any criminal standard. Something in between what happens when country folk operate sophisticated equipment and a sort of vicious hazing.

Buster wasn’t his real name. It was Charles. Arnold thought that Charles just didn’t suit him, so Arnold started calling him Buster. To himself and then to his family. Buster was his Little League coach—the first coach of any type Arnold had ever had and his first introduction to the concept of teamwork.  

Arnold was ten years old in 1980, the minimum age for little league in his small town, and had only just met Buster at the first practice that March. It was odd to see someone new in a town as small as Auslandersville so at the outset Arnold was intrigued by Buster. There were no tryouts because only eleven kids signed up. Arnold had done so reluctantly. His mother read about the league in the church bulletin, wanted Arnold to be part of a team, told Arnold he was playing, and dropped him off at the diamond behind the church. There was Buster, talking baseball. 

Years later, Kevin Costner would make playing baseball in cornfields look poignant and nostalgic. Noble even. It was none of those things to Arnold at that age. Cornfields bordered two sides of the Auslandersville diamond. At that time of year, they were newly plowed and freshly manured. An over-the-rickety-wood-plank-fence home run meant retrieving a ball that had more likely than not landed in a pile of fresh cow shit. Smells also included piss and fecal residue of deer, skunks, woodchucks, and every other animal that country folk deemed acceptable to dwell.

The baseball diamond also abutted the church cemetery.  It was still cold in March, but not cold enough to keep the playing surface from being muddy. There was no backstop, just the old shed where in the old days they used to park the congregation’s horse and buggies. Neighboring farmers mowed the grass whenever they had a hankerin’.

Before the days of Under Armour and the proliferation of moisture wicking fabrics, kids like Arnold’s teammates wore jeans and hooded sweatshirts with unyielding iron-on patches declaring their allegiance to International Harvester tractors or Dekalb corn seed. They hung those sweatshirts, jackets, and the batting helmets on the crosses that sanctified and adorned the concrete headstones. Arnold invariably wore his “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” sweatshirt and his “Mork and Mindy” suspenders to the first practice and kept to himself. 

There was a lot going on back then in Auslandersville despite being just as removed from the international skullduggeries of the day as Buster. There were lots of countries that were pissing righteous Americans off, and folks like those in towns like Auslandersville relished and reveled in their ability to feel part of the zeitgeist by hating along. As much as they prided themselves on being separate and apart from the world, the townspeople also yearned to be included, to be both immune and relevant. 

Auslandersville was located about 40 miles west of Buffalo, an odd little city which was becoming even smaller and sadder with each factory closing and steel mill downsizing, and the subsequent loss of each tavern and family that supported those factories because “the goddamned Japs” had figured out a way to make the steel cheaper than God-fearing red-blooded Americans. Arnold listened while grown-ups got drunk and played cards. He heard snippets of portions of remnants of this talk evincing something that teetered between bewilderment and disdain.

This was also mere weeks after the U.S. hockey team’s Miracle on Ice. Those “commie bastard Russians” were defeated just a few hours north in Lake Placid. The Cold War was in full swing and a man named Ronald Reagan was in the midst of a near sweep of GOP primaries, promising a return to greatness which, underneath the polish, was a cowboy’s country swagger. 

It was also around this time that people kept track of how many days a country named Iran was holding American hostages. Fifty-two in all. Nick Pfenning’s son joined the Marines and was stationed in the Middle East somewhere. Nick could spare a son or two on the farm as he had eight sons in all. After church Nick would educate people about what was happening. It was also around this time that folks began seeing a nefarious looking truck driving through the town. It was hand-painted brown with the sort of leftover paint that one would find in a barn. Old beaten-up pick-up trucks, like Chevys or Dodges with rusted doors and hand-made wooden flat beds on the back, were not uncommon in Auslandersville. What was unusual about this one was that it had a crude representation of the finger, or “bird” (five humps, spray painted white, with the middle hump longer than the two on either side of it) painted on one side and the words, “Hey Iran,” spray painted on the other. Kids called it “the finger,” but Arnold had no idea what that meant. Arnold asked his mother and she told him it was a “very bad insult” and that Arnold should never to use it.       

It’s astonishing how kids are expected to navigate the world with what little information they have. Arnold knew so little about everything. We all know so little. Especially about what other people go through. What other people are going through. What other people have been through. The shit through which other people routinely go. The shit through that one must traverse.

The “Hey Iran” truck, incidentally, belonged to one of the Muhlfeld boys.

Buster was new in town and, even at ten years old, Arnold could tell that Buster was a man perpetually out of place. Buster was a larger man, overweight but not quite obese. His girth was anomalous in Auslandersville, a town of men who were perpetually fit from a perpetual regimen of plowing fields, harvesting alfalfa, chasing cows, and lifting tractor tires and sacks of grain. He drove an itty bitty little Datsun in a town where everyone drove balls-out Chevys and Fords. And, what’s more, he didn’t even fit into the tiny car. He would open the door, hold onto the hood, set his feet, and then do this pivot and lunge move to get his ass in the car. He used a piece of twine to fasten the muffler of his Datsun onto its undercarriage in a town where people instinctually took to their welders to fix such a thing. His too-blue Wrangler jeans, work boots, and burgundy Members Only jacket looked nothing like what they saw Billy Martin, Earl Weaver, and Tony LaRussa wear on television. His last name, pronounced “Boo” (like what a ghost says) and “kite” (like what Ben Franklin used to discover electricity) neither looked nor sounded like the names in a town filled with German farmers. You know, names with too-prominent consonants like Armbruster, Geissler, Vogel, and Keiffer that make everyone sound constipated. He made jokes and played baseball in a town where people chewed tobacco and took weather, corn, and tractors and the analysis thereof very seriously.

Buster was well suited for his role as coach though. He could hit a baseball over the fence consistently. He showed the boys how to stop ground balls by putting a knee on the ground. When Arnold misread a fly ball and caught it with his eye, Buster stopped practice, led him to the bench, and got some ice. The next practice, Buster brought in a pirate’s eye patch for him. Buster was goofy in a town that neither appreciated goofiness nor engaged in it. He had a round jolly face, tight curly hair, floppy jowls, a hearty laugh, and a friendly wavy moustache. But he also had a bumper sticker that read, “They Will Get My Gun When They Pry My Cold Dead Finger Off the Trigger.” He was like a friendly pachyderm that had just joined the Charlie Daniels Band. 

Buster’s son Chuck was also on the team.  Arnold had never seen him before because Chuck went to a school in the city near where his mother lived. He looked like the kid in a story about a kid and his wooden shoes and windmill that Arnold’s aunt had brought him from a semester abroad in Norway. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and perfectly square, symmetrical features. Chuck had an enthusiasm and boisterousness that Arnold both envied and resented. Though the resentment eroded somewhat when Arnold saw him take an envelope of Big League Chew out of the back pocket of his too-tight jeans, take out a large handful, and stuff it in his mouth.

“Do you have to chew like a pig?” Buster had asked when he saw the bulge in Chuck’s cheek.

This was not the sort of talk between father and son to which Arnold was accustomed. Chuck turned red and spit the wad of gum into the cemetery. It was the first and only time Arnold saw Chuck look embarrassed.

At that first practice, this kid asked Buster,

“Where do you work?”

 “I used to work at the steel mill,” Buster said. “But have been out of work for the past few months.” 

Buster was also, therefore, not a farmer, like everyone else. Arnold couldn’t help but picture Buster with a bandana on his head next to his best co-worker friend, putting his baseball glove on a bottle of Schotz Beer, and waving goodbye to it as a lively song about making Buster’s dreams come true played over the factory PA system. Arnold wondered to myself if Buster was more Laverne than Shirley or more Shirley than Laverne. He concluded that Buster was definitely more of a Laverne—neither polished nor apologetic, fiercely loyal, and prone to mischief.

“The Japs put an end to that,” Chuck replied in an effort to curry favor with his father.

Arnold’s resentment was reignited when Chuck started to play catcher, a position for which he was uniquely and inarguably suited. Like Buster, he was large. He could throw to second while squatting and could hit the ball over the fence with frequency. Chuck was a favorite of the guys on the team, the new kid, a natural leader, a good teammate.

“I don’t need a cup to protect my balls,” Chuck has said when Buster told them about how they had to get a cup to protect their ten-year-old balls. “I need a Tupperware bowl.”

Everyone laughed.

As the season dragged on, Arnold grew to vigorously dislike Chuck. Arnold rolled his eyes at Chuck’s “Dukes of Hazzard” discourse and was disgusted by his "Dukes of Hazzard" t-shirt with the General Lee on the front, his aluminum bat, and his cool, mesh Yankees cap. On the bench, Chuck would try to engage him in conversation about the game, favorite television shows, and the weather. Arnold would ignore him or move down the bench. Chuck spat when he talked and was about twice as big as Arnold was, so that his meaty arm and leg engulfed Arnold’s. 

Arnold preferred reading to playing baseball. Or doing anything outside. He was ambivalent about the Miracle on Ice and was neither a leader nor big enough to exert any influence and inevitably resented those who did. Arnold couldn’t understand the notion that he didn’t live with his mother. Arnold imagined him and Buster waking up every morning face-down on the sofa, each in last night’s clothes, one leg drooping above a carpet strewn with ice cream containers and empty bags of Fritos, a crust of spit caking the throw pillows under their snoring, tobacco stained mouths while the late night test pattern on their television filled the room with a multi-hued glow.

Arnold was jealous of his name, the monosyllabity of it, its simplicity, the way it connoted toughness, the way it was a synonym for the word throw, the way it rhymed with words like “buck” and “truck”—mighty things to which mighty boys should aspire. Arnold was named after a great-grandfather who passed away a week before he was born. And in 1980, his name suffered the rare double-defect of being the name of the then-omnipresent precocious fish-out-of-water black kid on “Diff’rent Strokes” and of being one of those fucked up words like orange or purple that literally rhymed with no other words forcing kids to new depths of mean spiritedness. Note this was also before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a household word synonymous with toughness, which would have offered some redemption. 

So kids said “Arnold” with a tone, almost like they sang it, but one you sing with disdain. Arnold had an aversion to Chuck because he fit in so effortlessly even though he went to a different school. He wrestled with teammates and talked about the nuances between a GMC and a Ford F-150. He was boisterous, confident, and made friends easily. Chuck squatted over home plate to assume his position as catcher and his butt crack showed. Some kids laughed, but he didn’t give a shit.

Arnold discovery of hate led him to believe that it was common, perhaps even expected, for people to hate easily and hate often for reasons that clearly required no reasoning. As such, Arnold started developing his own aversions; kids who wore digital watches, kids who didn’t catch on in math class as quickly as he thought they should, kids who could make their fingers do the Mork thing like when he said, “Nano, Nano,” and kids whose parents eschewed tenets of nutrition and gave them Reese’s cups in their lunch. 

The Sunday following that inaugural practice was Easter Sunday. Arnold’s church was hosting the cantata, and churches from all over the region were coming to sing songs about the resurrection. It was odd seeing Buster, who just days prior had taught Arnold and his teammates how to protect their scrotums, standing at the altar in a white turtleneck singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” It cemented Arnold’s devotion to him. It was as though Butch Cassidy was singing with the Osmonds.            

The baseball season proceeded smoothly. Chuck played catcher and hit home runs. Arnold was, to his own amazement, rather adept at baseball and played second base, a coveted infield position that he played in a surprisingly authoritative manner. Whenever someone tried to steal second, Chuck would throw the ball to Arnold, and, more often than not, they would get the runner out. While trotting off the field Chuck would make it a point to say, “Hey nice tag Arnold.” Arnold usually said, “Thanks,” or nothing at all. He certainly never said, “Great throw,” or anything to acknowledge Chuck’s efforts.   

The thing is, Buster and Chuck both really liked Arnold.  When it was time to travel to games, Buster usually offered to drive him. Once when Buster drove Arnold to a game in a similarly small town, the trio got into the tiny Datsun that smelled of sweat, baseball leather, and dirt, and Buster, with a flourish that belied his embarrassment, quickly threw away a Burger King cup filled with spit and chewing tobacco. 

On the way home from that game they stopped at Judy’s Dairy Shack for ice cream cones. 

“Coach Bucheit, I don’t have any money,” Arnold had said. 

“Don’t worry about it,” the coach had replied.

When they got to the dairy shack window Judy herself was in there smoking a cigarette by the soft serve dispenser.

“Arnold order whatever you want,” Buster said.

“I’d like a small dish of maple walnut in a dish,” Arnold said timidly. 

Chuck, who had ordered a large twisty cone and was standing behind Arnold licking it vigorously and looking appalled at his selection.

“Maple walnut? Who gets maple walnut?”

Arnold ignored him. 

“Maple walnut? What are you an eighty-year-old man?”  

Funny how a person questioning your choice of ice cream can make you hate them. Don’t these ice cream questioners know this? When has such a question ever garnered a positive reaction? When has the person fielding the question ever thoughtfully and prayerfully considered the questioner’s analysis and switched ice creams?    

 “I just like it,” Arnold said, capitulating.    

The boys got back in the car while Buster paid Judy. The driver’s side door opened and in lurched Buster with a large twisty cone with sprinkles and off they went.

“Dad, have you ever heard of a kid getting Maple walnut ice cream?” Chuck asked, eager for his father’s approval.

“Jesus Christ, Chuck,” Buster replied. “Not everyone has to like everything you like.” 

Arnold was taken with the notion that Buster got sprinkles. Such an indulgence for an unemployed Little League coach. So very colorful for a man perpetually in Wrangler blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Like a large mustachioed Johnny Cash replacing Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Arnold thought about Chuck many years later when the senior Senator from Utah’s chief of staff looked at Arnold’s veggie burger as they ate lunch together in the Russell Senate Office Building and suggested Arnold was trying “too damn hard to mollify PETA.” 

At the night of the night, as a parting “fuck you” to Chuck, Arnold left his dish and plastic spoon in the back seat of Buster’s Datsun in the hopes that Chuck would have to clean it. The following week, Arnold’s mother gave him $1.75 to give Buster at practice. When Arnold approached him with the money in his outstretched hand, Buster politely refused. That forced Arnold to sheepishly tell him that his mother told him to “not take no for an answer.” Arnold was relieved when Buster accepted. The fat rolls rode up his wrist as he wedged the three quarters into his Wranglers. Arnold wondered then if Buster was poor, something he hadn’t considered because the vision Arnold had of Buster always had him surrounded by candy wrappers.    

At some point in the early part of May, Buster started working for the town highway department. Though he arrived at practice far more exhausted, and maybe a tinge defeated, than when he didn’t have a job. His job was to fill in potholes. Arnold would sometimes see him on the town’s half dozen or so paved roads as Arnold road home on the bus and happened to look up from whatever book he was reading. Buster would walk behind a large dump truck and shoveling hot asphalt into the numerous and sizable potholes that had materialized during the upstate New York. It looked torturous. The other men on his crew were usually smoking or sleeping in the cab part of the truck while Buster sweated like a motherfucker. 

Arnold woke up on the morning of May 21, walked downstairs to get breakfast, and found his parents sitting at the table. They told him that Coach Bucheit was dead. His father said that he had been pinned by a dump truck on Centerville Road. Arnold neither asked for nor sought any additional information, but it was all the kids on the bus that morning would talk about. An authority on such matters said that he was shoveling the asphalt into potholes on Flanders Hill Road when the brakes of the truck from which he was shoveling gave out and ran him over. Someone else equally knowledgeable about such things said that his father told him that the truck had tipped over and a truckload of hot asphalt had spilled over and onto Coach Bucheit. It didn’t matter really. All Arnold could think of was the men in the front of the truck snoozing while Buster worked and died.

A few days later, Arnold was once again part of a reptilian parade of yellow buses that winded its way down the town’s Main Street at 3:15 p.m. on any given weekday. Arnold saw Chuck standing outside the Hillcrest Funeral Home.

He leaned against one of the pillars there and wore an ill-fitting blue blazer. It was hot outside, so the bus’s windows were open. A few kids yelled, “Hey Chuck,” or give him a Fonzie thumbs up. Chuck smiled, nodded, and returned the thumbs up. Arnold saw this play out a few times as the buses passed by.

Chuck saw Arnold. Arnold saw Chuck. And then Arnold gave him the finger. A big-old, motherfucking, ten-year-old middle finger. Chuck, on the steps of the funeral home, just looked at him with sad and bewildered eyes. Arnold looked down at the metal “Happy Days” lunch box on his lap, coated with purple glaze from the purple drink that had exploded, feeling simultaneously slightly ashamed and slightly triumphant.  

If Chuck told anyone that Arnold gave him the finger while he was standing on the front steps of the funeral home, Arnold never heard about it.    

Chuck went to live with his mother in Buffalo and didn’t play any more baseball for Auslandersville. For the remainder of the season, no one talked about Buster or his accident. Buster was technically an outsider, so it wasn’t as though they had lost one of their own. Nick’s father Jim, a farmer who could spare evenings since he had plenty of sons who could assume evening cow milking duties, took over as head coach. Jim was unlike Buster in most ways. He was a thin man, which prompted Arnold to think about calling him Slim Jim. Arnold decided against it and never gave him a nickname.

Arnold didn’t see Chuck for more than twenty years.

***

When he did see Chuck again, Arnold was thirty-one and working in Washington, DC for a Senator (who we should ostensibly keep anonymous but whose identity will be apparent to anyone who read or heard anything resembling news in the last decade; especially in light of the fact this narrative relies on the fact he is from New York).  The Senator promised his constituents and his wife (who, a formidable politician in her own right, was really fucking pissed) and the party leaders that he would, in exchange for their support and in an effort to regain their trust, seek treatment for undisclosed addiction and personal issues after being found in a hotel room with a Brazilian hooker, her dead pimp, and a bunch of cocaine.

Arnold’s capacity and general propensity for loathing had diminished about zero percent in the decades since, so the Senator, as a boss and a person, was the target of a great deal of his hatred. This was the summer before 9/11 when people had an insatiable appetite for this type of shit. A summer littered with such scandals that precipitated a wave of pessimism, ill will, and the presumption that people, thanks in no small measure to the heralded Senator, were generally rather shitty.

But Arnold liked the ancillary parts of the job. It paid well and afforded him access to people and a modicum of prestige. And a means, he thought, to fully an irreversibly extricate himself from whence he came.    

Some years prior, Arnold left Auslandersville for Princeton. The admissions committee actually cited his origins as a contributing factor for his acceptance (cementing Arnold’s idea that Auslandersville was more like a third-world country than a place suitable for human habitat). Arnold flourished at Princeton and, as they say, rarely, if ever, looked back. It was there Arnold met and befriended the Senator’s son and when Arnold needed a job the Senator hired him as a speechwriter jack-of-all-trades sort of thing. 

Of the many degrading things that Arnold was tasked during that tumultuous summer of 2001 was arranging the Senator’s smooth transition to the treatment facility, which had to be done in days to minimize the fallout. The Senator chose Creekside Behavioral Health and Addictions Center because it was in New York State, about 40 miles south of Buffalo in an old mansion on Lake Erie that had once been a summer home for one of the captains of industry who had prospered in Buffalo in the 1920s. It was far enough away from his native New York City to minimize paparazzi. Arnold was tasked with making sure that the Senator would have as much privacy as possible. Since a big part of Creekside’s program was trips off campus to serenity inducing hiking trails and nature preserves, Arnold needed to make sure that the van windows were appropriately tinted and paparazzi proof. That was his job. To tint the Senator’s fucking windows. 

The Senator had two sons. Tap (Yale) and Tanner (Princeton). Both douchebags. The Senator was the sort of person who would (and did) buy a Yale Lacrosse windbreaker and a Princeton Lacrosse windbreaker, pay a seamstress to cut each in quarters, then switch and resew the quarters so that he was left with two windbreakers each composed of two Yale quadrants and two Princeton quadrants so that he could wear it to the one fucking annual meeting of the two schools and walk around New Haven like he owned the fucking place and cheer on his son Tap for one half of the game and then cheer for Tanner for the other. This was the pinnacle of douche. Arnold secretly took the fucking half-Yale-half-Princeton-all-douche windbreaker from his office and sneaked it into the bag the Senator would be bring for his thirty-day stint at Creekside to further amplify the Senator’s imminent demise.  Also sort of douchey. 

Anyway, Arnold found a place, the ridiculously named “Falcon’s Auto Painting and Custom Upholstery” to tint the windows. It was near Creekside, and the owner, the ridiculously named Herman Falcon, assured him that he had enough High-Performance Charcoal Window Tint in stock and that he could coerce “one of his bozos” to work overnight so the Creekside vans would be ready for the Senator’s arrival the next morning. 

Arnold flew to Buffalo, took a shuttle to Creekside, met their director, and made sure their facilities were adequate and adequately prepared for whatever media attention they might get. He then had to stop by Falcon’s to make sure at least one of the vans would be ready for him to pick the Senator up from the airport early the next morning. 

Falcon’s seemed far from everywhere but was only about a fifteen-minute drive from Creekside. One of the Creekside workers drove him east, away from Lake Erie, through some sort of town center, past a bunch of abandoned houses and storefronts and an old brick library, then out of the town center and over to Falcon’s. The road out of town was lined with apple trees and overhead waterfalls of flowering towering shrubs of some kind, fragrant sweet pepperbushes probably. In a few minutes, the paved remnants of the old lake side town gave way to a wide sleepy road lined with corn stalks and not long thereafter they pulled into the dirt driveway of an old shop with an old painted sign that said “Falcon’s.” There were three of those vintage Mobil gas pumps out front, like in an Edward Hopper painting. They were rusty, had broken gauge windows, and were clearly not functional, though one could discern they were once red and noble and as such, still commanded a modicum of reverence. Like heralded robot ghost sentries, retired but still standing at attention, to protect the auto repair and upholstery place from invaders.

Getting out of the car driven by the Creekside liaison was like stepping out of the present and into that Edward Hopper painting. It was around 9:00 p.m. when Arnold walked in and found a fleet of four white Creekside passenger vans spread out like patients etherized on an operating room table. It was hot as fuck, especially for that late at night, way too hot to be without air conditioning, as Falcon’s clearly was. 

As Arnold took off his jacket and loosened his tie he heard someone apologize for the heat saying that the AC shut down automatically at 8:00 p.m. Arnold turned around and saw a large man with a “Chuck” patch on a blue and white striped collared shirt that had grease stains up and down the front. They introduced themselves though Arnold knew right away who it was.  If Chuck recognized Arnold or if his name rang any bells, he didn’t show it. Chuck had the same perfectly square, symmetrical face, as though he had worn his catcher’s mask throughout adolescence and his head and grown into and around it.

“Ordinarily, the window tinting process was a simple one,” Chuck said. “You measure the window, cut the film with an X-Acto Knife, stick it on the window, and then squeegee it smooth. Under ordinary circumstances I’d be done in a few hours, but in light of this goddamn humidity, the tint is bubbling like a motherfucker so I gotta squeegee the fuck out of it and it’s gonna take a lot longer than usual.” 

“Of course it is,” Arnold said.

“The override for the AC timer was in the boss’s office,” Chuck said, as perspiration dripped off his forehead and onto a piece of the tinting film that he was cutting which he wiped vigorously with some sort of chamois cloth. “I was lucky he let me keep the radio on.” 

Chuck went on to explain that when doing big jobs like this one he liked to do all the back windows at one time, then all the driver side rear windows at one time, then all the passenger side rear windows until he had worked his way up to the front windshield. This, he said, was so he didn’t have to take the same measurements multiple times. It made sense but it also meant Arnold was going to have to stay there until the job was done. So clearly both men he had no choice but to sweat and squeegee like the compliant motherfuckers they were. 

Arnold took some papers out of his briefcase probably worth more money than Chuck made in a week. Chuck kept working, cutting, squeegeeing, and pasting. And the country radio station played something by Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, or whoever the fuck it was.  

Something happens to a place at night. The shop, which flourished by day, seemed strangely forlorn. The daytime jingle-jangle of metal tools and the omnipresent whirring of air compressors were replaced by nothing but intermittent grunts and late-night country radio. The shop walls, covered with motor oil signs, girlie calendars and license plates belonging to a different era, certainly fostered Arnold’s sense that he was far from home. Shadows made from the one streetlamp on the wisteria ivy growing frolicked on the windows, opaque with decades of dust and repair shop residue during, as though taunting the two men stuck inside.   

They did not speak much to each other for the first several hours. Arnold made some phone calls. Chuck took a break around 1:00 a.m. and there was some country song on the radio apparently sung by Faith Hill.

“What I wouldn’t do to be Tim McGraw,” Chuck said. 

Arnold looked at him, annoyed, perplexed, and only slightly amused. 

“Tim McGraw is married to Faith Hill you know,” Chuck explained. “I wonder whether Tim eats Faith’s pussy. Of course he does because how could you not eat such great pussy. I bet Tim just goes to town on Faith’s motherfucking pussy and goddamn what I wouldn’t do to Faith Hill’s pussy if given the chance to eat that shit myself I would tear that shit up.” 

Given the forethought Chuck had clearly expended on this issue, it would seem that such conversations were neither anomalous nor cause for embarrassment at the shop. 

“I don’t have any comment on that Chuck,” Arnold said.  And having exhausted the discourse on Faith Hill’s lady-parts, they resumed their work or more accurately, Arnold did his work while Chuck did his.  On the cusp of disgust, at his companion and at the state of things in general, Arnold realized he had heard similar conversations about the ferocity with which one might eat another’s pussy, though such conversations were conducted in far more refined, even heralded, settings.

Chuck, who had been diligently applying window tint all night in an effort to preserve the Senator’s ego, broke another silence some time later. 

“My dad used to tell me that people don’t change,” he said.  

Arnold looked at him with nervous puzzlement and said, “I wouldn’t disagree with that.” 

Chuck went back to his sweaty window tinting. 

“You were such a dick to me when we were kids,” Chuck said a few stupid country songs later. He said this in something between an inexplicable southern drawl, further slowed and muffled by a mouthful of chew and exhaustion, and a kid’s aggrieved pronouncement, like in that commercial when the kid says, “you sunk my battleship.” But it was a grown up’s voice so it contained a sufficient amount of grown up intolerance so was delivered in a tone akin to, “You sunk my fucking battleship you fucking prick.”  

While the boisterousness and confidence Arnold loathed so readily in the spring of 1980 had diminished, Chuck still didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought. And hadn’t changed.  He spat when he talked. You could see his butt crack when he squatted over the rolls of window tint and cut out his shapes. And he didn’t give a fuck. 

“It’s not okay to call me, a paying client, a dick,” Arnold said.

“It’s also not okay for you, whether a paying client or a kid, to be a dick,” he replied. 

Such truth from the mouth of Chuck. 

Arnold looked at him and shifted in his seat a little bit but couldn’t muster anything to say to question or combat Chuck’s assessment. It was jarring, being recognized, and acknowledged after luxuriating in presumed anonymity for so many hours. Arnold dealt with fucking senators for fuck’s sake but nevertheless somehow felt smaller than Chuck, this ghost from the past. Arnold gathered up the papers upon which he had been working, timidly closed his briefcase and sat up in an effort to appear larger.   

“I’m sorry,” Arnold exhaled. “I was.”

“You was what?” Chuck asked.

“An asshole. A dick. Mean,” Arnold replied. 

“We were kids. That was a messed up time for me anyways,” Chuck replied, with kindness, in a voice that belied the scope of how messed up that time was. Bo and Luke Duke’s perpetual skirmishes with Boss Hogg were messed up; losing a parent is incomprehensible.    

“I think I just hated that town, Chuck,” Arnold said. “And I took it all out on you.  Because you let me. “ 

“You were dad’s favorite,” Chuck said. 

“I don’t know about that,” Arnold said. “I know that some people love small towns. I don’t. I get that everybody knows everybody and there’s a real community that you can’t and don’t get in other places and people take care of each other and all that John Cougar Mellencamp bullshit. If you’re like me, though, and don’t fit in, a small town can be a prison.” 

 “That’s why dad liked you so much,” Chuck interrupted. “You didn’t fit in.”    

“Why did he even live there?” Arnold asked. “Why’d he let people treat him like that?”

“It was cheap,” Chuck said. “And he was tired of the city. He loved Auslandersville.” 

“I get that,” Arnold said. “Though it’s tough for me never understood why people loved small towns. And why I was constantly told I was supposed to. I hated the idea of knowing everyone.”    

 “People were always real nice to me,” Chuck said. “I loved it there.”   

“It showed. And that bugged me,” Arnold said. “I could never understand how you were from somewhere else, and went to school somewhere else and yet fit in so effortlessly.

“What can I say?” Chuck asked through an impossible wide smile that revealed teeth slathered with chew. “I’m just a natural born leader.”            

Arnold could not physically go back to the cruddy baseball diamond in his cruddy hometown in 1980 and start a conversation with Chuck. Or to the tiny, silver Datsun outside the ice cream place and ask him what his favorite truck was. Who is favorite singer was. His favorite episode of “Dukes of Hazzard.” He also could not go back to the bus ride home and stop himself from giving a bereaved Chuck the finger. But Arnold asked Chuck to sit down and as he did so, Chuck became the young person with a baseball uniform t-shirt, muddy pants, and a catcher’s mask who was squatting behind home plate brusquely and loudly uttering baseball batting heckles and coating the bars of his catcher’s mask with spit. Through the cacophonous memories, Arnold apologized to him. And it occurred to him that every single moment of someone’s life is a crucial one. 

“Do you remember that night we got ice cream cones at that rat infested shack?” Arnold asked when he was done with the first van.

“Sure,” Chuck replied. 

“So do I,” Arnold said. 

Had it not been 2:00 a.m., Arnold probably would have asked Chuck if he wanted to get some ice cream. So Arnold just signed a carbon invoice on a greasy clipboard, got the keys for a van, shook Chuck’s hand, and drove away.

***

So that was the day when Arnold was sitting in a repair shop, feeling annoyed but omniscient, when, in a break between two worlds, a memory came to him and rebuilt some months. Months during that Iranian Hostage Crisis that, unlike the current skullduggeries of today, Arnold thought had receded. Arnold realized that the fact Buster died during the Iranian hostage crisis was more significant than one might suspect. It seems to have been the beginning of an era, probably every generation has one, wherein he learned how to hate and hate well. 

Gary M. Almeter is an attorney and has been published in McSweeney's and The Good Men Project. He lives in Baltimore, Md. with his wife, three children, and beagle. Also check out his short story "The Love Song of JFK Jr." and his writing playlist. 

To submit an original work of fiction to Writer's Bone, visit our submissions page. 

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Creative Writing Exercise #1: Joe at the Door

Welcome to Writer’s Bone’s new ongoing series aimed at igniting your creativity energy on Monday mornings! All you have to do is add to the prompt in the comments section and we’ll put the story together and publish it later in the week! If you have any ideas for future prompts, email us at admin@writersbone.com or tweet us @WritersBone.

Joe at the Door

Joe had a cup of coffee in his hands. It was too hot to drink, but it was warming his hand nicely on this cool, early spring morning.

His notebook was in his back pocket. His pen was on his ear. His ideas were rushing through his head. He needed to get to his writing space as quickly as possible.

Joe balanced a plate with his blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese on his left forearm. His stomach rumbled, but he knew he’d only get to his breakfast after unleashing his ideas on a blank page.

He opened the door to his office. It swung wide. Sunlight temporarily blinded him as it did every morning. They quickly adjusted and he took a step into the room.

Joe stopped just past the threshold.

Crap, he thought.

To submit an original work of fiction to Writer's Bone, visit our submissions page. 

ORIGINAL FICTION ARCHIVE