Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  Ben finally finishes mixing highballs and changes the music to New Order which is a fucking amazing choice. John hates new wave! He never listened to it with anyone ever! Not even high school girlfriends!

  John smooths out his whites. He raises and lowers his eyebrows a bunch to release some tension. He stretches out his mouth and says vowels to calm himself before going back into the heat. He can hear them yelling to the dish pit for pots and pans and Nan is flat out. Thank god he is long in the limbs, John thinks to himself as he catches a flash of black forearm grabbing up a frying pan and dunking it into the sink. There is never enough and John is always found lacking.

  When John was a younger man, he wanted to achieve much. He wanted to win all the awards and go on the shows. John made a lot of notes in the margins of cookbooks, sketched out menus on napkins, spent hours alone at markets smelling things, wandering over the bog tasting bits of berries. He memorized edible flora and fauna. He believed that he could do this thing he was setting out to do. He knew it in his belly.

  He would be a success.

  When Georgina had come in yelling this morning he’d thought his goose was cooked.

  John thinks solely in cliché food metaphors when he feels overwhelmed. The tackiness of the language is soothing. John has always sought out comfort in the tacky. He likes the way the word smacks together and sticks between his fingers.

  This unfortunate path passed down from his father whose snarky voice narrates John’s thoughts while punctuating the worst of them with a hard hacking smoker’s cough.

  Georgina brings home the bacon.

  George is the big cheese.

  Gigi’s the breadwinner.

  John’s meal ticket.

  John does not want to be his father’s son in any way. He’s a goddamn man. Not exactly his own man. But he is not his father’s fucking son anymore at least. John wonders what it would feel like to belong to himself. He has thought about nothing else since last night when he got those hateful texts from Iris. Since the first day he saw her John thought, oh for fuck sakes, let her be a lesbian.

  Iris was definitely not a lesbian.

  But John has been fucking his life up since before he met Iris. He is used to feeling the pain of worry surging through his body. He feels less alive without it. The state of perpetual dread is what drew him to the kitchen. Every day of his life is a battle where John dies in his imagination constantly because he can’t keep his hands to himself.

  He has fucked Iris while Big George held court in the dining room. He took Iris out back to discuss the pairings before service had even finished. She knew damn well what pairings he meant but followed him anyway, and as he finished from behind her, hands on her steering-wheel hips, he caught a glimpse of an old overhead fan hood George had been nagging him to take to the dump and promised himself as he came that he would do that for her now. John’s guilt made him a better husband.

  Bad behaviours don’t just miraculously disappear. They are but rearranged.

  He tried to solidify an alternative arrangement. This was regularly punctuated by the sound of broken glass. Iris had learned long ago how to fire breakable things. Once she hauled a pot of boiling pasta off the stove and whipped it at the wall beyond him. And he yelled you could have hurt me and she yelled you hurt me all the time! And he said stop yelling at me and she said stop fucking your wife! And he said I can’t and she said then let me go.

  Iris sobbed, please, John, you have to let me go. Please, I feel like I’m going to die.

  But John would not let Iris go.

  He did not rightly know how. Instead, he continued to share his trauma around like orange slices. One for you. One for you. One for me. In this way he still retained the entire piece of fruit harboured inside bodies he inhabited. He needed to be near both of them to ensure his life had meaning. He would be a noteworthy addition to their Wikipedia pages. George would probably be the mayor and Iris some famous painter. And while John cannot sure summon greatness himself, he can lap it up from another source. Crack a coconut open shirtless and pour that milk into his mouth from a high extended right hand.

  John has watched enough soft porn to know what the ladies like.

  In the bedroom and the kitchen, he is in control in a way that brings about clear results.

  He feels a sense of accomplishment every time a clean plate comes back. Each compliment paid the kitchen gratifies him. Bolsters him. He needed their feedback to go on. Constant and clear continuous approval. Going without, even for the smallest amount of time, was a punishment he could not stand.

  And every day he thinks they may not come. They may not like it. Or they may not come again. John has to put out better than before. Combine things differently. In a way that no one has thought to do. Make something totally new out of these same parts until they can think of no better way to eat. Or be eaten.

  Clap clap, round of applause, standing ovations for King John.

  This is the level of swerving self-loathing, introspection and grandiose fantasy John routinely indulges in while claiming to be a simple cook who just wants to feed people. John has practised his Michelin Star speech to the point of obsession. He’ll start up on growing up poor, everyone loves a make good story. Then he’ll talk nonsense about making gorgeous food that connects with people. They’ll die for that. Then he will drop in some general references about beauty and love while looking pensive. Women will be wet for miles. Food Network. Netflix. Vice. The new Anthony Bourdain. John thinks he is definitely better looking.

  See how far out of field John can go. John is far flung.

  A woman’s voice rises from the dining room to cut into the kitchen. John abandons the beet mash so quickly the bowl spins on the shiny slick surface. The sous take note. Even Omi hears the wonk wonk rotation as he turns the water off. They all contemplate future employment at the sight of their employer running into the dining room. There is nothing cool about this place anymore.

  But it is not John’s wife or John’s girlfriend doing the screaming.

  It has nothing to do with him! John thinks it is a miracle and is momentarily overjoyed until realizing, my god, of course it does, this is still his restaurant. And he calmly approaches the table to investigate.

  A beautiful young woman in a red dress is screaming at a man with similar features.

  * * *

  I should fucking phone Mom on you.

  Amanda is yelling that she should inform their mother that her only son is drunk and high in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day with the piece of shit that sexually assaulted his own sister.

  The red bow belt across Amanda’s middle is peering directly in Calv’s face as she slides out of her snow boots into the fine pink pumps she has brought for dinner. Calv clocks the matching nails and pumps. He knows what he says next will escalate the situation further but he is drunk and high with Roger accidentally. He has little recourse.

  Jesus, look at you, you’re not going to the fucking ball, my dear.

  This line gets him nowhere because Amanda knew she wasn’t going to the fucking ball.

  She was going somewhere better.

  Right up to getting dressed a couple hours ago, Amanda had thought she would spend the evening sitting in a beautiful dining room with high vaulted ceilings and thick embossed velvet wallpaper. She had planned on sipping ridiculously expensive wine that perfectly matched her pink gold watch looking better than a Renaissance painting across from her man on this manufactured holiday celebrating love. Amanda intending to be fucking breathtaking in all pink and red right down to her lacy underwear.

/>   She had waxed every inch of her goddamn body for this night.

  She had done so after finding a receipt from the Golden Tulip jewellery store in Freddy’s coat pocket while looking for matches to light a scented candle in the bathroom.

  But the storm meant the better restaurant had decided to remain closed because it was not safe for people on the roads. While Amanda agreed with this decision in principle, she did not agree in actuality because she had not bought groceries. Amanda refused to eat pre-bagged salad and nacho chips while getting proposed to. No goddamn way. This was going to happen tonight.

  She had not waxed her fucking arms for nothing.

  And so she thought, okay, The Hazel. They ate there all the time. That could be okay. Named for a nan instead of a pop. There was charm in that. Something reminiscent of the bay. They could still drink fine champagne. The Hazel had better spirits than the food half the time anyway. And they made these little beeswax candles she liked, and there would be fresh snow to walk home in. Freddy would take her arm in his protective way and it would be sweet and thoughtful. Amanda thought the whole thing might be salvaged and proceeded to dress accordingly.

  But here is her idiot twin brother strung out before eight with her most loathed human.

  For the love of Christ, Calvin, what the fuck is wrong with you?

  And she is whispering now as she leans in to her brother’s face that she’s not gone on Donna but she hopes Donna gives him the back of her jesus boot for this.

  I hopes she tears you a new asshole.

  Amanda goes full bay when she is angry at Calv. She also goes full bay when she is about to come but that’s not pertinent currently. Just a reflection of Amanda’s inescapable linguistic heritage that even four years of theatre school and a thousand hours of voice coaching could not master. Passions cannot be coaxed out of Amanda, and that’s fine because Frederick is wholly enamoured of the gibberish talk Amanda mouths moments before she sleeps. Amanda sometimes finds it a weird frustration that the man who loves her loves her just as she is, because it means she wasted a lot of time trying to change for shitty men she had mistaken for being not shitty.

  Though some men you can’t even mistake for not shitty as they are so clearly the worst.

  Like Roger. And maybe, and this bit makes Amanda very sad, and maybe her brother.

  Both men clock the lack of conjugation in Amanda’s speech.

  Amanda no longer fully in control of her faculties and capable of telling tales.

  How long did it take you to get right into the blow? she cracks so loud that Calv darts his eyes around the room to see who has overheard.

  I mean, my god, Roger has got a half gram hanging out of his nose. Why do you beat around with him? He is so fucking gross, Calvin! Cocaine is so fucking gross! It’s not even real fucking feelings you’re feeling. It’s not even real fucking coke. It is probably cut to shit. And how do you even have the money to be at it? You got no job. You are unemployed, idiot. Lord fucking reeving, if I finds out you’re after borrowing money from Mom for blow I will string you up worse than what they does to them poor Peruvian farmers you exploits for your fake jesus good time with that raging asshat.

  The verbal onslaught that Amanda is bombarding Calv with now looks to be giving him an aneurysm. He’s rubbing his head and face every which way. The pressure upon him is leaving red blotchy marks on his skin. Though it could also be the food and drinks he has ingested. Amanda has seen Calvin eat five different kinds of meat before two p.m. They call it Sunday dinner though it is usually Calvin’s Sunday breakfast as the first meal he eats after waking up hungover.

  Calvin plays his Saturday card wrong every week.

  He also regularly plays his Thursday and Friday card wrong. Donna has confiscated his Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday cards and Sunday he is just too full of meat to play. At least when he’s home for a visit. That’s what Susie says when Amanda gets worked up about the heavy drinking. That he’s only home for a visit sure.

  You don’t even know where that coke comes from? Or what it actually costs humanity for you and fucknuts to get on the rips? No, you know nothing and your ignorance hurts people, Calvin. Bolivian teenagers found in the woods with their heads cut off, all those black boys shot in the street, women made mules to get gear across the border so you can snort shit coke in some townie restaurant on a Tuesday night. On fucking Valentine’s Day! But you don’t care about those people, do you? You don’t care about anyone. Not even yourself. You are a careless man. I mean, my god, don’t you read the news? Or watch it on that way too fucking big television you got? There’s fentanyl in that now, you fucking moron. You are going to end up in jail or dead!

  The thought of Calvin dead breaks Amanda’s spirit a little and she softens beneath her own words. She is sick of being mad at her brother. She is tired of screaming at him. Yelling at him to read a fucking book never results in him reading a fucking book.

  She doesn’t know why she bothers. He doesn’t appear to want anything more from being alive so why hound him? It only upsets her mother and father to see them so separate. Susie forever reminiscing over them as babes in the bassinet rubbing each other’s backs. The first time Amanda was sent home from school for fighting. Having to turn the truck around as soon as they was in through the door to go get Calvie. Both sent home for defending the other. And Susie never minded at all that they got suspended. Little nippers they were, too small to fight fair so resorted to using their teeth. Susie gave them the appropriate talking to but she was actually proud as plum pie that they was looking after each other.

  Roger stirs at the remark about jail.

  Roger is like a bluebottle come to in the windowsill after spring sunshine has warmed the ledge. Though dormant for all of this due to the conditions of his mind, he is suddenly in a frenzy, darting like a mad thing off the glass wall of words Amanda has hauled shut in front of them. Roger cannot handle the thought of jail even hypothetically.

  Amanda is going on about things in the hypothetical now and this is not a word he understands. They all blames him for his ignorance. Laughs at him for not knowing the things they failed to teach him. Somehow it was Roger’s fault he never knew how World War II started. Roger only knew what they taught in the movies. And it’s not that he never passed. He wrote the notes off the chalkboard just like everyone else in World Geography. But it was just words. Didn’t mean fuck all to him then and it don’t mean fuck all to him now.

  They was just words. Meaningless.

  So he don’t clearly know what is being said around him half the time which has always made him uneasy. Amanda does that every time she sees him on purpose, he allows. She throws words he don’t recognize at him which makes him feel all the more worthless and undeserving of her attention. Because he does think she looks pretty in her red dress with her loose curls hauled back like that to the one side. Roger is always filled with a desire to hug Amanda when she wears her hair curly. He don’t care much for her straight hair especially when she got it cut short. He has told her it makes her look like a dyke and she has told him to fuck off worrying about her. She has barked across a church basement during the Christmas carol service that Roger Squires can never mind her hair cause he was never getting handy to it. And people would look at Roger waiting for him to say something, which he always did.

  He never had the right words in he’s head so he said the wrong ones.

  Roger’s knows Amanda’s hair is only caught out curly when it gets wet. He knows that it falls in ringlets round her face as it dries. Springing twists you could put your finger through if you didn’t have rig
ht sausage hands like he’s own. And this evening’s snow had settled in her hair nice and she had looked like some kind of angel when she pulled off her purse and coat in that way she does without even looking around first to see who is looking at her cause she don’t care anyhow. And even though they ain’t never been boyfriend and girlfriend, Roger has always thought on her as his Mandy. Ever since they was little.

  He don’t care if Freddy Fuck Face is stood up behind her to help peel off her coat, she’s still his, but he makes a note to himself: help women take off their coat cause they likes that.

  Roger has to make a lot of these notes. Because just like wars and words, he don’t know the basic stuff about women neither cause no one taught him when he was young. Don’t knock any one up. That’s what he was told. Don’t get anyone pregnant, said like it was the only important piece of information worth knowing. Wrap it up. Pull it out. Don’t, repeat, do not come inside her even if she says she’s on the pill.

  This was what Roger knew about girls: don’t leave anything behind in them.

  You needs to watch yourself, Mandy.

  Fuck you, Roger.

  You should shut up before someone shuts you up.

  Rog, knock that off.

  Excuse me, sir, you can’t speak like that in here.

  She talking all loose like I’m afraid of her but I’m not.

  Rog, what did I tell you earlier about leaving my sister alone?

  Sir, you need to stop yelling.

  Me? She’s the one who started yelling!