The Garbage Times - White Ibis

by Sam Pink

  At the peak of the bridge, we both coasted for a little bit, looking out over the bay.

  Beneath, the water spread on either side for many miles, unlit, except a red dot or two from passing airplanes.

  Total darkness where the water met the sky.

  A little windy tonight, but still very hot.

  And I imagined a sunlit rainbow portal opening above the bay and displaying our old, empty apartment, where Jo is arranging dead babies on our old couch.

  And the way she arranges them is so fucking beautiful.

  Seriously fucking beautiful.

  ‘What’re you thinking about?’ my girl said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  The bridge ended with my favorite billboard.

  It showed an old lady dead in a casket, wearing a dress.

  The caption read, ‘You said you wouldn’t be caught dead in that dress. Well, now it’s too late.’

  Still wasn’t quite sure what it was an ad for.

  Death dresses?

  Arrangements for casket attire?

  Dinosaur costume ALL THE WAY for me.

  Or, maybe ‘classic mummy’ with the wrapping.

  A lawyer shuffling some papers, eyebrows raised. ‘So, classic mummy, then?’

  We turned down the last block home.

  Onto a dark road, which was empty except for the whir and beep of the bugs, wet and overhung by Spanish moss like tinsel beneath the one and only streetlight.

  Just dark woods and swamp all around us.

  And I wondered where the white ibis slept.

  Probably standing up with its giant beak rested on its breast, dreaming about how much it hates me.

  Perched upon its stilted ass, in the dark wet bayou.

  Well, fuck you too.

  My girl and I dropped our bikes in the driveway.

  We paced around and drank the beer, kicking pinecones at each other under the stars.

  Like a couple of white ibbies.

  Forever wandering around, sometimes hiding, sometimes asleep, otherwise just there, walking around alone.

  I picked up a couple fallen palm branches and stripped them down to sticks.

  ‘Ready?’ I said, tossing her one.

  We had a swordfight.

  She was really good.

  I found myself outmatched at first.

  But then I used better footwork.

  And then …

  Why then I crushed her.

  Punishing the knuckles and the ass.

  I hit her knuckles with a sound like gonk.

  She yelled, ‘Stop it, baby!’ then tried to poke my face with the end of her stick.

  I was sweating intensely down my neck, chest, stomach, and genitals.

  In the warm, wet night.

  The bay.

  I slapped away her sword and smacked her ass really hard with mine and said, ‘You said you wouldn’t be caught dead in that dress. Well, now it’s too late.’

  4

  Dotty loved the new home.

  There were tiny lizards everywhere.

  So many little lizards.

  Everywhere you went, there’d be a bunch of lizards running around.

  Running across the ground in front of you, going up a tree, into some brush, or pausing on the hot deck and looking around like ‘Woo!’

  And Dotty loved to kill them.

  Every one of them.

  But not this one on the deck.

  She didn’t kill this one.

  She just injured it a little, then continued knocking it around lightly with her paw.

  Every time it tried to escape—one leg broken and trailing behind it—Dotty just pawed it back towards herself.

  Eventually, the lizard stopped trying to escape and just stood there facing her.

  It went from trying to escape to standing and facing her, making itself look a little larger, posing.

  Its red gill thing coming out.

  It was fucking deep.

  So proud and brave.

  Even Dotty was confused for a second.

  This lizard was for real.

  It looked up at her, gill things puffed out, like, ‘All right, all right yeah, big tough guy, let’s have it. [wipes nose] You wanna pick on someone? Yeah ok, all right, pick on me, tough guy, go ahead and—’ but Dotty just mangled it some more.

  She left it broken and mostly dead, on its back, barely breathing.

  She licked her paw and cleaned her face.

  ‘Goddamnit, Dotty,’ I said.

  My girl said, ‘What is it?’

  She was standing naked on the deck, sunbathing, holding the handrail.

  ‘The fuckin lizard’s still alive.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, holding her chest. ‘You have to kill it then.’

  ‘I don’t wanna kill it.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘Goddamnit, Dotty,’ I said, taking off my boot.

  Dotty licked her paw, staring on, like, ‘Yes, finish my deed, stooge.’

  I smashed the lizard’s head with the heel of my boot.

  Its guts came out its sides.

  Fuck.

  You tried, you tried.

  I get it.

  Sometimes you just gotta pick a place and say, ‘Right here. Here’s where it happens. Right here.’

  Gills out, boss, gills out.

  R.I.P.

  5

  My girl and I were stopped in traffic, on the way to her childhood friend’s house for some kind of function.

  A childhood friend’s niece’s something, birthday party of some sort, nephew maybe, I don’t know.

  I didn’t press for details.

  Going to these kinds of things had become common.

  It always just meant hanging out somewhere and eating red Styrofoam plates of things.

  Couple of nods, exchange of personality traits, and you’re at the finish line.

  But mostly just hanging out holding a red Styrofoam plate.

  Hell, this time I even put on deodorant.

  ‘Are you looking at the same billboard?’ my girl said.

  She was curling a length of hair with her fingers.

  ‘Haha yeah.’

  There were so many billboards in Florida.

  Mostly lawyer-related.

  The lawyer on a motorcyle, pointing at the camera.

  Or this one with a close-up of two lawyers.

  Boister and Drummins.

  Which was which, my girl and I couldn’t agree.

  But one was very bald.

  And the bald part of his head extended up over the normal rectangular shape of the billboard as a separate piece.

  Which—my girl pointed out—meant that somewhere they had to print just the domey bald part.

  ‘You know what I mean?’ she said. She was doing a motion with the non-hair-curling hand as if trying to grab something out of the air. ‘Somebody has to print out just that part of his head.’

  I laughed, imagining it slowly emerging from a printer.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Fuck. Hey, Larry, needya ta print up anudda couple two/chree’dem bald, dome parts.’

  Then both of them waiting as it slowly prints, holding it so it doesn’t bend, loading it into a truck.

  Fuck.

  I mean really.

  ‘It would look crazy without that part though,’ she said, speeding up to go around an accident scene.

  And she was right.

  ‘I don’t care either way,’ I said.

  And I was also right.

  When we pulled up to her friend’s house, I tried clarifying my relation to the party again but gave up.

  Red Styrofoam plate, don’t bring up murder.

  Then, victory.

  We entered the house, my girl yelling, ‘Hello hello hello.’

  There was a huge dog splayed out facedown on the tile.

  ‘Hi, Cocoa,’ my girl said.

  The dog didn’t move as we passed.

  Hell yeah.

  I considere
d assuming the same position next to it.

  But I also didn’t want to get bitten.

  Ok ok.

  Everyone was out on the back patio, finishing up a game where you put your face in this cardboard cutout and take a chance with a crank attached to a whip-cream-loaded device.

  Very high stakes, it would seem.

  I comprehended it with quick dread—determining I would not be participating—through the sliding glass door as my girl opened it, yelling, ‘HIIIIIIIiiIIIIIIII’ (with at least eighteen more i’s).

  No, I thought.

  No, I will NOT be doing this.

  I will not.

  And not because I didn’t want to look uncool or whatever, or because I didn’t want to experience the silly fun of having whip cream in my face, which, overall, seemed more tense and unenjoyable than anything else (downright inconvenient if nothing else), but only because sometimes you have to resist, just to show you can and will.

  You have to say no.

  No, I will not.

  ‘Your go!’ yelled an older lady wearing a plastic visor.

  She grabbed my arm and squeezed it.

  It was my girl’s friend’s mom.

  ‘Yeah, give it a go, hotshot!’ my girl said loudly.

  Like I’d been bragging about it the whole way there.

  I smiled.

  ‘No, I’m afraid I won’t be doing that,’ I said.

  Everyone said, ‘Awwwww.’

  ‘Thank you very much for the opportunity though,’ I said.

  I half hugged my girl’s friend as she held a small stack of used red Styrofoam plates.

  Then I sat down and shook hands with her husband.

  ‘Talk about fishing, he fishes,’ his wife said, going inside to get us some red Styrofoam plates.

  He was a deep-sea fisherman.

  ‘Like with a net?’ I asked, squinting into the sunlight, looking—no doubt—like an asshole.

  He said, ‘No, harpoon gun.’

  ‘What!’ my girl said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘You kill things underwater with a harpoon gun?’ I said.

  Hands folded in his lap, he closed his eyes and pulled his lips in a little while nodding. ‘Yizzir.’

  That was his job.

  That’s what he did every day.

  He went out on a boat, dove deep underwater, walked on the ocean floor, and shot fish with a harpoon.

  Fuck.

  My girl accepted two red Styrofoam plates from her friend, one of which was handed to me, even though I knew it was more of a sidearm for baby.

  Backup snacks for mama, if you will.

  ‘Aren’t you scared of sharks?’ she said, running a chip through some dip. Then she went, ‘MMMMMMM,’ while slouching for a second. ‘Kare, I love this dip!’

  The fisherman sat up, adjusting his oversized neon basketball shorts, folding chair squeaking. ‘Eah they mostly leave y’alone. I did get int’it with one, few months ago though.’

  No one said anything.

  I watched a kid throw a smaller kid into the pool as another kid threw a football at him.

  ‘You got into it?’ my girl said.

  ‘Eah,’ he said. ‘I’s going down for muh last dive of the day. It had to be oan the last fucking one.’ He rolled his eyes like oh brother, adjusting his tank top. ‘But I’m down’ere,’ he said. ‘And somehow I git my ankle caught between a cuppla rocks. Couldn’t move. So I’m strugglin, strugglin’—he twisted the hem on his basketball shorts to suggest a struggle—‘and it twists muh leg up, and then I’m upside down’—he held up both hands—‘I’m trapped. And right then, this bullhead shork, I seent this bullhead shork coming up’—he did a gesture with both hands—‘swims past and bumps me.’ He blinked a couple times and snorted. ‘They bump you a few times afore they bite. It’s like a test. So he comes by and bumps me again and I know he’s about to bite me. Y’only get so many bumps.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ my girl said, dominating what appeared to be a tiny quiche.

  ‘Yep, so I got out muh banger,’ he said, explaining that it’s basically a device to set off ammunition underwater. ‘You cain’t actually shoot or nothing underwater but I always take a round of two-two-three with me. I put Karen’s nail polish over the shell casing in case I get attacked, yinno?’

  ‘Ah the nail polish covers the primer,’ I said.

  ‘Yup. The round don’t really fire or nothing, I mean it do, but the bullet int what kills something underwater. It just sends out a, like a shockwave and that’s what gets em.’ He shrugged and said, ‘So I put it against his head, and—fuck, I feel bad, man, it was a beautiful shork, but man, Karen’s seven months pregnant at the time, and yinno, really ain’t no good time to get ate by a shork, so, shit, I pullt the trigger.’

  ‘Oh man,’ I said. ‘You kill it?’

  He nodded firmly. ‘Well, he wun dead right away, but, blew a huge hole in’is head. And the way he swam off’—he demonstrated this wobbling movement, both his arms at his sides in the folding chair—‘he wun goan for, I’ll say that.’

  ‘Holy shit, that’s awesome,’ I said. ‘Man.’

  ‘That’s so scary,’ said my girl, putting a napkin over her plate and eyeing mine. ‘What color nail polish does he use, Kare?’

  ‘Oh, I gave him this purple one I didn’t like.’

  They both laughed.

  The fisherman straightened up and took a pull off his beer. ‘Nah, I mean.’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘I felt kyna bad, truthfully.’

  And I guess—maybe for a second—so did I.

  Imagining the way that shark flopped off, embodied only and forever by how the guy mimicked the movement.

  Surely to die.

  Broken beyond repair.

  Fucked up.

  One last tiny and heavy moment of semi-consciousness as it floats out into the endless middle.

  Shit.

  Some dark shit at the daytime pool party.

  But then I realized he and I were talking about different things.

  ‘Nah, man,’ I said, handing my girl my plate. ‘I’d probably celebrate. Fuckin, do a mock guitar solo right after blasting it.’

  Because fuck you, shark.

  You come for me, I don’t give a shit if you’re a newborn chick with two broken wings, I’ll fucking kill you.

  Come get it.

  Point-blank.

  Put the steel to your head and send you back out into the ocean all fucked up.

  You like that?

  Run up on me pinned upside down between two rocks and I’ll do a bad-ass situp motion, grab you in a headlock, then …

  BLAOW!

  A storm of bubbles clearing to my smiling eyes behind my scuba mask.

  Still alive, motherfuckers.

  Me: Infinity +1.

  Everything else: 0, forever.

  Swimming off into the endless in-front-of-you with a giant hole in your head, I thought, squinting into the sunlight.

  Like always.

  ‘That’s so scary,’ my girl said, putting a napkin over my plate and setting both plates on the patio table. She folded her legs sideways beneath her on the lawn chair.

  The kids by the pool made their grandma watch as they threw each other into the pool, trying to catch the football.

  ‘Oooooh,’ said grandma, laughing.

  ‘Yeah, well, I mean I feel bad I really do,’ said the fisherman. ‘It was a beautiful shork. But I mean, what could I do. Never a good time to get ate.’

  ‘No, man,’ I said. ‘You were trapped underwater, in the domain of one of the deadliest killers, upside down no less, and still managed to overcome. That’s awesome. You should be proud. Don’t feel bad.’

  He took another sip of his beer, shrugging.

  Then, barely, he dodged something, which hit the wall like woonf.

  ‘Watch it, Caleb,’ he said, throwing a soaked football back towards the pool.

  6

  And then, yet again—in support of what
many would call probability—I was broke.

  The bills at the house were expensive.

  I’d come to Florida with a little money from book royalties and some paintings I’d sold, but then … the brokening.

  The Brokening, Part Forever.

  Entering what one might call ‘the peanut butter times.’

  I was walking back from the post office after mailing one of my last paintings.

  A hundred dollars minus shipping.

  So I decided to paint more.

  Pretty much my only option until more book royalties.

  I had only started painting a year ago but was making a little money off it.

  It was a matter of being, objectively, what one might call, you know, sort of unemployable.

  ‘Objectively speaking,’ I said to the white ibis, who was wandering the driveway, ‘what you might call unemployable.’

  The white ibis walked off a little in one direction, head bobbing forward with each step, stilts pumping, one eye on me.

  ‘Get over here, good-looking,’ I said, posturing like I was about to go after it.

  But it just kept walking.

  I went inside.

  My girl was at her parents’ house for the night.

  I checked my email.

  Let’s see here, let’s see.

  There was an update from someone who’d bought a painting a couple weeks ago.

  This guy in Australia had bought a painting as a secret birthday surprise for his girlfriend, who liked my stuff.

  It was her first birthday since they’d been together, so he wanted the gift to be good.

  The email said:

  She absolutely loved it and started tearing up and there is a teardrop mark on the letter you wrote haha thanks so much man. It’s on our bedroom wall :) thanks again man. She is going to frame the letter you sent her too and she loved your pessimistic view of writing. Best birthday ever.

  It was the second time I’d mailed something to Australia recently, the first being to a guy who emailed and bought a painting as an anniversary gift for his boyfriend, who had one of my book covers tattooed on his arm.

  My power down under rises, thought I.

  Damn.

  Nice.

  But, still, I had to find a job.

  Yes.

  That was what I needed.

  That thing people always seemed to be having and doing.

  That thing I … never had.

  I opened another tab to look at job listings.