Pictures of Houses with Water Damage: Stories (14 page)

For three days, we are indeed like prisoners upstairs. We sneak down, sneak out, when we are certain he is asleep. We come home, he yells at us—

I NEED FOOD! I NEED BEER! I NEED TO TAKE A SHIT!

I’m at the local bar and having a few beers with my friend, Ed.

You won’t believe what has happened to my life, I say to Ed.

I give him a run down of the events. His eyes get wider as I tell him more.

You’re pulling my leg, says Ed.

Wish I was making this up, I say.

That’s just weird, he goes.

It’s something, I say.

It’s scary, he goes.

It sucks, I say.

And you’re here, he goes. Here with me.

I needed to have a drink in peace, I say.

Your wife, your kid, he says.

At her mother’s, I tell him; I packed them up this morning and got them out of there.

Good, good, he says.

We drink more beer. We’re getting sort of drunk.

The guy may never leave, says Ed.

I thought about that, I say.

He’s like a grunt dug in his foxhole, says Ed; he’s there, ready for war. He wants war, you know.

He wants his life back, I say; but he’s not going to get the old days.

What will you…

Don’t know.

You need a gun, he says.

Wish I had one.

I have a gun, he says, a revolver.

Really.

Do you know how…

I’ve fired guns at the range, with my stepfather, I say.

I live three blocks from here, says Ed. I know.

We can take a walk. I can let you borrow it, he says.

There are two things that give me courage when I go home: the alcohol running through my blood and the Smith and Wesson .38 silver snub-nose in my hand. I know he is still there. His van is still parked in front of the house. The TV is on in the living room. He’s there, in the dark, his half-body illuminated by the TV and the images of spaceships shooing laser beams at each other in outer space. There is a box of pizza and an empty twelve-pack of beer on the floor by him.

Hey, he says; there you are. I got to the phone and ordered delivery. I was getting really hungry there. Some pizza left if you want a slice.

I sit down in the chair across from the couch.

No thanks, I say.

He asks where Anya and the baby are. I don’t tell him. I ask him what he’s watching. Not sure, he says; but there are a lot of actors in make-up that are supposed to be aliens of some sort.

The gun is warm in my hand.

I have no idea what you must think of me but it mustn’t be good, he says. Now that I have some food in me I can think straight. I feel just horrible. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. If you can give me a hand, get me into my chair, I’ll be going now.

He sees the gun, I’m sure of it.

Or maybe he doesn’t.

I want to kill him right then and there. Instead, I help him into the wheelchair.

You don’t know how lucky you are, he says.

I think I do, I say.

I’m very sorry, he says.

I know, I say.

Well, tell Anya I said that—that I’m sorry, and tell her I hope everything is okay, and maybe we can talk later, some day, some day down the line.

Some day, I say.

Finish the pizza, he goes, it’s good.

And then he’s gone. He makes his way to his vehicle; takes him a few minutes to get his chair and body in. I watch him from the window, holding the pistol, ready for anything. He gets behind the wheel and drives away.

I sit down. I eat a slice of pizza. It’s cold but tastes great. I have a beer. I watch some TV. I would have killed him, I know this; I was ready to commit murder. That scares the hell out of me and makes my skin feel itchy. I take a shower. Violence is a funny thing, a weird part of life. I call Anya at her mother’s house and tell her she can home now.

I
n the picture he looked normal, and this surprised me, the way I said it to myself, “He looks normal,” and wondering what I meant. He was a teenager in the photo, wearing a sly grin, posing for the high school yearbook. He didn’t have a worry etched into his face, not like in the other photos I have seen of my old friend, either holding a burning cigarette or a half-empty forty ounce bottle of King Cobra.

“Every time I open the King,” he used to say, “that snake comes out and bites me,” which meant several more bottles of the cheap malt liquor; he never knew when to stop, he drank until he passed out.

In the photo, he is not yet a father; both his kids would be born to his teenage wife before he turned twenty. In the photo, he is not worried about rent, bills, food, broken-down cars and the tax man at the door.

Remember well the day he decided to check himself into Rehab for the third time, the last time.

“Three strikes and I’m out,” he said.

He knew he had to dry out and get clean or else all the booze and crystal meth would kill him, and he had two kids to think of, kids who were now grown and about to make him a grandfather. Rehab wasn’t cheap.

“I have to sell my Gibson,” he said, “and the trailer out in the desert, and my car. I have to sell them to get back in.”

His Gibson guitar was a vintage 1961 Les Paul and worth at least $10,000. I knew how much he cherished the instrument; a prop when he talked about becoming a rock star. That was before he turned thirty. Now he was forty-two and all those rock’n’roll fantasies were just a lot of drunken banter of far-fetched dreams, the way aging actresses in the Midwest wonder what their lives would be like had they moved out to Los Angeles when they were eighteen instead of getting knocked up by the high school sweetheart.

Something always kills dreams.

The day before he went in, we decided to have one last memorable drunk. We hung out around the trolley station downtown, like we did ten years ago, where we used to drink and drink and wax poetic and talk about all the great things we would do and how one day we’d become famous and have our pictures on the cover of
Time
and
Rolling Stone
.

We had a case of Budweiser and a bottle of Teacher’s to celebrate the occasion. We toasted sobriety.

“My gravy days are around the corner,” he said.

“Our salad days are gone,” I said.

We bought a small piece of rock cocaine wrapped in plastic from a street dealer walking by and smoked that. It was cut with soap, but there was enough crack to get a decent buzz.

Another guy walked by, saw us, walked toward us. He was in his fifties, wore dirty overalls and carried a bucket and a fishing pole.

He said, “Can you spare a beer?”

Before I could say no, my old friend, whose name is Luke by the way, handed the guy a beer.

The guy’s name was Fishpole Pete.

That’s what he said.

He said, “I’m Fishpole Pete.”

“I can see that,” Luke said.

“I fish at the peer,” he said.

“Catch any trout?” Luke said.

“No trout in the ocean. I did catch a couple fish.”

We looked in the bucket: there were two fish, and they smelled like the ocean, they smelled badly of fish.

I’m allergic to seafood so I turned away and backed off.

“Can I have another?” said Fishpole Pete. He had slugged down that first beer in three gulps.

“Sure,” and Luke handed him another, and then a third.

Next, Fishpole Pete wanted a taste of Teacher’s. “That’s some fine bourbon,” said Fishpole Pete.

And then he said, “You guys got any money?”

This made me nervous.

Luke said, “Nah,” although in his jacket pocket was $23,000, from selling off his possessions. Rehab was going to cost him twenty grand, with three to start life over when he got out.

“Three grand for the beginning of The Good Luke Days,” he’d said. “Three K of gravy,” he’d said.

Fishpole Pete was not happy with that answer. “No money?”

“We’re broke,” I said.

“You bought this booze.”

“Our last dime,” I said.

“We’re celebrating,” Luke said.

“Celebrating what?” asked Fishpole Pete.

“Sobriety,” Luke said.

Fishpole Pete laughed heartily at that.

“You two are funny guys,” he said. “I once tried sobriety,” he said, “right after I got back from Desert Storm. Didn’t last long,” he said. “Fuck sobriety,” he said.

“You were in the war?” Luke said.

“Rifleman in the Army.”

“Wow.”

“Fucken George Bush Senior and Kuwait,” he said and spat a huge chunk of phlegm onto the ground.

“What was it like?” Luke asked.

I wish he hadn’t. Fishpole Pete was waiting for a cue to go into his desert war narrative. He talked fast and there was no stopping him. He became violent, shooting air guns at us, grabbing one of us and shaking us and saying, “You know what it’s like to have a mortar blast ten feet from you? To not know if you’re being targeted with chemical or bio weapons? Do you know FEAR?”

I had a bad feeing about Fishpole Pete. I wanted to get out of the scene; this was not the play I had been cast in. I gave Luke a look, the “let’s bail” look.

Luke shook his head and continued to listen to Fishpole Pete.

Fishpole Pete whipped out a long knife and slashed at the air, telling us about all the Elite Republican Guard soldiers he killed.

“I’m out of here,” I said.

Fishpole Pete didn’t notice half his audience was leaving his theater. Luke kept nodding his head and asking for more details.

Here is the thing about my old drunken friend: he will befriend anyone, talk to anyone, listen to anyone’s story. In the past, this has gotten him into some trouble, as a number of psycho cases have obsessively proclaimed him their bosom pal.

It’s easy to fall in love with anyone who will genuinely listen to your life story.

I quickly made my way to the car, three blocks away. Underneath the passenger seat was a .45 revolver. Back then, I thought having such a thing in my car would protect me from the unexpected.

I drove to the trolley station. Fishpole Pete had Luke pinned to the ground, the tip of the knife pressed into Luke’s chest.

I didn’t know if Fishpole Pete was re-enacting a war scenario or intended to kill my friend. I rolled down the window and yelled, “Yo, Fishpole Pete!”

He looked up and I pointed the .45 at him.

“Leave him alone,” I said. “Let him go,” I said.

Fishpole Pete had had guns pointed at him before, this I could tell by looking into his big brown eyes. He also knew my gun was real.

“Drop the knife,” I said, “and back away.”

Fishpole Pete did as I said, his hands up.

“I was only joking,” he said.

“Get in,” I said to Luke, and he did.

We drove away.

Luke laughed. “That was insane!” he said. “Oh,
the irony
! What if he killed me, just when I was to start my new life? What if he killed me and found my money! He woulda said God was smiling down on him, and it was his lucky day for all the hell he went through in the war. Man, you should’ve
heard
those stories.”

“I heard enough,” I said, and drove him straight to Rehab, where he checked in.

Before leaving my car, Luke shook my hand and said, “Thanks for saving my life, twice: from Pete, and for driving me here.”

He did his time in Rehab, two months, and walked out clean and sober.

Three weeks later, he died of a heart attack.

His ex-wife sent me the high school photo in the mail.

“It’s the only one I could find,” she wrote, “and I thought you’d like to have it.”

I placed the picture on my fridge, held by a magnet in the shape of a fish.

Have no idea what kind of fish it is.

D
avid’s a guy I knew from the bar. We’d get drunk together once or twice a week. I didn’t know much about him other than he could drink more than I could and still drive.

He said he needed extra work because he had two kids.

I worry about them not having enough food, he said. Isn’t that what life is all about, food, he said.

I felt for him. I owned a tree-trimming business. It was fall so there was plenty of work.

I can do that, he said.

He’d been working with me for a week and he was doing well. He was a hard worker and didn’t complain about his back or hands like some guys do.

One day on the job his wife and kids showed up. She was a pretty blonde thing, small with a sad smile. One kid, a boy, was three years old; the other was an infant, not over six months.

She showed up with a stroller and a picnic basket.

Hey hey, he said.

They kissed. It looked so tender and loving that I turned my head. David picked up both his children and kissed them.

Wife and two kids and not even twenty-two years old. I was forty and didn’t have a wife and kids or anything. I felt like something was missing and that made me feel like drinking.

What do I owe this pleasant surprise? David asked.

Thought we’d bring you lunch and some sodas, his wife said.

I am thirsty, he said.

She reached into the picnic basket and handed him a canned Diet Pepsi. He drank it fast and said, Thank you, honey.

Are you hungry, honey? she said.

Yo, David said to me, can I take my lunch now?

You’re your own man, I said, go right ahead.

His wife asked me: Would you like some lunch?

Already ate, I lied, but thanks.

I just didn’t want to share food with them. I didn’t have anything against the wife and kid, they were nice as far as wives and kids go. I felt uncomfortable about the idea.

They were poor and needed their food. I didn’t need food.

David and his family sat under the tree he was trimming, branches scattered around them like the remains of a battlefield.

I continued trimming my tree, standing high on the ladder. But I could hear them talking and I couldn’t stop myself from not listening.