Against the Country

by Ben Metcalf

  This young man deserves, I know, and may even expect, to be spared my derision, as he was likely the product of a true poverty, as opposed to the simple poorness my own family had caught, but what was the place in all this of the erection? What was its purpose? Why did it demand my attention, that ordinary barb attached to an ordinary child? why do I pay it any now, thirty-some years after our initial acquaintance? Why must I remember that it followed me out into the hallway when class was over, and might have pinned me against the wall had its host not been forced to ferry it off to a remedial lesson elsewhere? Why must I suspect that its object was, by force of will, or by divine intervention, to join with me there, or with some notion of what I might become, and thus fail, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, to crawl up out of what generational ignorance hole had prompted it to peer out over the top of its jeans in the first place?

  Names

  Because these words could refer to an actual boy, with an actual penis, which at one point reared up at me during my actual childhood, I might be expected to name the boy, or else his penis, but I think that neither necessary nor wise. “Boy” and “barb” and “teen” and “penis” will suffice here, being names enough to identify what animated our rural societies then and mostly animates them now; names enough for what the land regularly charms and deploys against invaders old and new; names enough for what put those deep bruises on a bus-mate’s face after her father discovered that a brown boy had caused her pink belly to swell (the issue here being not the swelling so much as the brownness that had gone into her and would eventually have to come back out); names enough for what prompted a newly nonvirginal idiot I knew, by birth and inclination a suburbanite, to crow like a perverted farmhand after only a few short months in that place, “You ain’t never had none o’ that stuff, han ya boy?” We called him Han Ya Boy for the next two years.

  His name alliterated comically, this proud initiate to the Park and Ride, but I remember him best by how perfectly ashamed I felt for all of humanity on account of what he had said. The pregnant girl had a name too, so apt to her sweetness and her situation that it would be a pleasure to render it here, though in truth I remember her less by her tag than by the fact that she quietly confided in me, of the boy who had climbed through her window that night, “He mmped me. He mmped me good.” She actually said the “mmped.” What is a name compared with that?

  What is a name compared with I have the fear of Jesus in me or They had to use the jaws of death? Why are writers so easily enamored of the stupid technique by which “John” is made to convey a certain blandness, or at most the notion “herald,” while “Jane” calls out with her own sort of blandness, even if the clumsy intention is to reference Lady Grey, say, or Ms. Mansfield, or any number of other Janes (or Jaynes) who by their boldness lost a plain or pretty head? Whether I am beyond such tricks or they are beyond me is beside the point. I will permit myself neither the luxury of names that have no claim on my memory nor the laziness of them that have plenty. “Ronnie” means more to me than every “Romeo” and “Charles” in the world put together, more than any flighty and bothersome “Jay,” yet its employment here would rent me only a word-doll we might dress up poorly between us, powerless (it or we) to render what the land led actual Ronnies to say and do out there, always to my chagrin. Could any doomed “Juliet” or “Emma” or “Daisy” possibly compete with my doomed “Jennifer” or “Cindy” or “Sera”? Surely not, though even the most talented reader might gather from the latter three no more than queen (the first) and ashes (the second) and angel (the last), in which case all is lost, despite the fact that those particular interpretations, in that particular order, do draw an eerily accurate map of the tractor path down which American country girlhood is usually forced to sashay.

  The one character I am tempted to name at all in this narrative, if only as a form of copyright protection for his descendants, is a boy whose name I do not even remember, though he produced what is easily the best line from my childhood, if not from my entire life. I say “boy,” but in actuality he had failed so often that I guessed him to be in his early twenties by the time he caught hold of me in the back of a junior-high classroom, and hypnotized me with eyes no less horrified than my own, and yelled, by way of boast or introduction, “My dick don’t get hard till it sees the pussy!” Later on I heard he was killed in a car wreck, along with some others, but that line of his is immortal, or ought to be. In walking, waking life there was a name for him, but not for that. Some actions, some utterances, deserve to be their own name.

  Rifle

  It was a rifle, not a shotgun. “Shotgun” might sound better here, and might make for a flashier tale, but it was a rifle nonetheless, and I did not load it, and I did not intend to fire. That is, I had a fair idea of how to load a rifle, and I knew where the ammunition was bound to be kept (conveniently near the firearms, praise Jesus, in my house as in any other), and I was a good enough student even then to match the numerals on the box with the caliber requirements of the gun. Still, I did no such thing. I merely retrieved the rifle from the closet under the stairs and carried it down with me to the road below, thinking not of the violence it could do but only that it seemed, of the possibilities before me, the closest to what I imagined a Hatfield or a McCoy might have on him, or a sun-bloated corpse from the War Between the states: a dark brown stock devoid of any style, a long steel barrel devoid of any accuracy: a gun that looked able to kill, and was purposed for that, but seemed wholly unconcerned with where its hole was finally punched. I confess that my father owned such a gun, and that I fetched it out of the closet one bright afternoon and took it down into the road, thinking not to bring destruction along with me but surely a kind of terror.

  I do not remember if before or after this incident my brother and I attended a party for young people at the volunteer firehouse a mile or so south, astonished that we had been asked to go and even more astonished that we had been allowed to; I do not know, therefore, whether to count said party as yet another rejected excuse for my behavior or as a desperate vindication of it. Neither is worth much, but the excuse has at least the charm of being refused.

  We walked to this party on newly paved road, and not on the old stuff, which might be a clue that the party happened after my indiscretion, except that I remember the road being paved well enough, and not made mostly of cracks and gravel, when I stepped out into it with my father’s gun in my arms. The formal approach to the firehouse, which jutted off Richmondward from our road, comprised the same twin tire ruts we knew from our driveway, and from God knows how many other such byways pumping that sad little county’s animus around, and so offered less of a surprise than that the firehouse’s cheap aluminum walls hid from the elements an excellent wooden floor, suitable for dancing.

  That floor may not have been made of wood, of course, and those walls may have been made of something fancier than aluminum, and the approach may not have been the ruts I recall but rather a truck-shat gravel, which would surely have eased the fire trucks’ way out onto the road, unless they were not fire trucks at all but only area pickups and secondhand town ambulances bought with too many miles on them, in which case this was not a fire station in the first place but rather a “volunteer rescue squad” outfit, though I cannot say as I care. It is within my ability to do an all right job with the facts, I suppose, and were the facts any match for the truth, which I swear formed me more than I formed it, I would probably do so. But a fact can lie as dependably as can anyone’s truth, and is often enough only what most people will agree to out of their own personal stashes of error, or else what was once said or written down long ago by someone no more diligent, and far less tasteful, than I. Americans will, I have noticed, stomach a great deal of mendacity, and spread it around, and rally to it even when they know it to be mendacity, so long as they can be assured that in doing so they have acted “professionally.” Yet I need not stomach and spread such mendacity myself. I need not exchange a flaw
I know to be true, because it is at least mine, for what is likely no better than a pilfered guess.

  It was a rifle, not a shotgun, and I did not load it, and I did not intend to fire.

  This party, whether I remember it badly or well, or whether I remember it well but render it unprofessionally, stands out with such insistence in my mind that I am tempted to think it an analogy for my art and way in this world. There were no adults around, that I could see, and I wondered how an unattended child, our presumed host, could possibly have secured such a space, at once new and strangely disappointing, all on his own. I wondered how he could have gathered us to him as he had, and placed a can of genuine Budweiser beer in every hand (when he was in a legal position to obtain none), and maintained on his face that generous country smile, and ignored the signs of obvious and impending disaster all around him. I wondered where the stereo had come from, and why that redhaired boy, the rumored swain of the girl who had complained about her titties on the bus, kept putting his head between the speakers like he did. I wondered what the hell we were supposed to do if a fire broke out tonight.

  The beer helped with that, the concern over parents and charred country remains and so forth, as did a particular girl. She was from the center of the county, older than I was and with hair the color of dark, oiled wood, and she gave no hint that she either despised or pitied me for the numerous times I had probably been beaten before her large and curious eyes. In fairness I cannot say for certain whether she was physically present at any of my humiliations, only that she would have known about them, though it would be nice to be wrong about that too. As I stood beside her, already altered by the beer, and stuck on what to say, a boy came into the firehouse and demanded that the music be turned down, whereupon he announced that two of our number were “doing it out in the ditch.”

  What I have related thus far is not necessarily what I meant by that audacious “analogy for my art and way in this world” above. Nor is the phrase explained by the fact that upon hearing of the goings-on in the ditch I began to laugh and (in imitation of television’s imitation of vaudeville) spit my latest mouthful of genuine Budweiser beer directly into the pretty girl’s hair. I remember that she glared at me, bedraggled, with either a new or else a renewed scorn (I will never know), and was quickly taken off by her friends to wash the incriminating odor out of her hair. I myself was taken off by my brother to witness the fornication, which act we had heard tell of but never ourselves observed, let alone performed, in a ditch or otherwise. We were bound to be disappointed. All the ditches we came upon were empty of people, if not of sin, and the grass around these gouges admitted of no rustle, except where we yelled “Copperhead!” and kicked the next boy’s legs out from under him, sure in our inebriation that he would not land ass-down on an actual snake. By the time we returned to the firehouse, and the too-bright bustle within, the girls had rinsed out my victim’s tresses and were indicating by means of folded arms and theatrical huffs that a formal apology was expected. We decided that I should probably go ahead and offer one, as that was bound to be funny, whereas a refusal to do so would not necessarily be.

  I found my lady with a comb in her still-wet hair, and as I opened my mouth to speak she took my hand in hers and led me away from the others. She walked me to a spot in the front room where we could be alone, if not unseen, and I made no objection to that. She sat herself calmly on a wooden chair there, and pulled me down beside her, and held my eyes for what seemed like a minute or two but was probably only a systole. She then asked if I was sorry for what I had done, and I said I was, which was true but also, by that point, a thoroughgoing lie. She smiled at this, the lie I think, and leaned in close enough that I could smell the soap and mall-bought eau de toilette in her hair. Her eyes met mine at a distance of two or three inches and allowed me to focus on what I hoped or even believed might be her intention. This accomplished, she reached back and pulled the hair off her neck and whispered, in a voice too womanly for either one of us, “Then blow it dry.”

  Pistol

  That was my second erotic experience in the rural parts, that I know of, and the only reason I do not count it superior to the first is that it involved no direct dealings with pain and so can hardly be considered representative. I felt little beyond a sudden rush of warmth, and a dizziness that increased the more I stared into those eyes, and blew into that hair, and asked myself whether I would vomit before or after I had kissed that self-satisfied pout. I harbored some further concern that a vomit might propel a further round of alcohol into her hair, and so undo not just the pout but also what delicate ministrations had lately been done in the bathroom, yet I cannot locate any real guilt in the thought. My attention was applied, as it has been ever since, to the aesthetics of the problem: even then I understood that a vomit might rob the scene of its crystalline charm, or else overdo it, and so I resolved to attempt the kiss prior to any discharge, rather than after, which to this day I contend was the proper approach. Sadly, I was unable to test out the theory: word began to go around that a young man, “bullshit” over some perceived slight by a girl on the premises, or possibly out in the ditch, had squired a pistol to the party and was wholly prepared to use it.

  This is what I meant, mostly, by the “analogy” business above.

  Said development prompted nearly everyone present to make for the relative safety of home, yet a few stayed behind, out of curiosity, or gamesmanship, or because they felt safer in the firehouse than they did in the dark of the countryside, all of which I can understand. Later I heard, though the tale may be apocryphal, that these stragglers found themselves obliged to listen while the young man waved his gun around and sang forth his complaint, and that by the time the police arrived he had convinced them all of his need for immediate incarceration, yes, but also of the undeniable righteousness at work, somewhere, somewhere, in his decision to come to the party with a gun.

  I do not claim to have any such righteousness at work on my behalf, only that I wish to be heard, and that I will take such measures as are necessary to secure myself a pulpit. I am unable, of course, to track down and shoot any member of my congregation who attempts to run off, but this should not be taken to mean that the runner will be safe, for ignorance and loss will attend such a creature always, and cowardice will be its constant shadow, and disdain will be its eternal reward from those who have made no retreat into that demimonde wherein a page or two glanced over is sufficient basis for the lie that the whole has been endured. Were I not word but true flesh I would hunt these carpetbaggers to the ends of the earth, and show them what mercy as they have thought to show me, and water all the dried-up creek beds of my childhood with their blood, and fertilize all the half-starved crops with their innards, and winter-proof every farmhouse window with their skin, and make hippie dreamcatchers out of their bones and sinew, and throw those chunks of them without obvious use (their brains) into the nearest ditch not occupied just then by a pair of country lovers unable to afford, or by their supposed common sense to locate, a simple town mattress.

  Shotgun

  Enough! Enough with asides and pale echoes of my shame! Enough with the fantasy that my past, or rather this wordy imitation of it, can be made to expectorate a worthwhile excuse for my crime! Enough with the conceit that a weeviled memory could possibly meet even the most basic requirements of this work! My brother has lately told me, and my father has since confirmed, that I took a shotgun down with me into the road that day, an old .410, as opposed to the rifle I remember with such vividness and such idiot pride. I have no doubt that their powers of recall far outclass my own, and so I hereby stipulate and declare:

  It was a shotgun, not a rifle, and I may have loaded it, and I may have intended to fire.

  Enough, anyway, with the claim that an excuse has the power to absolve. Enough with theories about whether Jesus was or was not my bosom neighbor out there, and where He might have been (in town? abroad? tending His pot crop out back?) when I needed His hand to stay o
r steady mine. Enough with attempts to portray intemperance and incontinence as a subsidiary of sin, which arises not from us but from the land we walk and lie upon, I am sure of it. Enough with the notion that the schoolbus was anything more than a vehicle in that hideous place, and that its fermentation of an intemperate society within its walls did not constitute a form of resistance, or else a variety of prayer, even if the prayer went unanswered and the resistance was no more than a snare laid by, and to the benefit of, Goochland County, Virginia.

  Enough with my clumsy dance around the matter of skin: I did, in fact, notice that my schoolbus driver was not colorless but brown, and I did notice that the teacher who misconstrued the act of circumcision was not colorless but pink, and I did notice that the principal who refused to rid us of this woman’s inanity was also pink, and I did notice that the teacher who continually threatened to “go blerk” on her students was brown, and I did notice that the math teacher who had supposedly beaten the boy in the hallway (I was not there) was brown, and I did notice that the supposedly beaten boy who had supposedly raped the girl (again, I was not there) was pink, and I did notice that the gym teacher who yelled “Mix it up down there” was brown, and I did notice that the boy I did harm to because he had insulted my mother was pink, and I did notice that the teacher who then refused to see my mother on account of my being “in jail” was brown, and I did notice that the pill smugglers who tried to make a mule out of me were in every case pink, and I did notice that the young man who passed me my first marijuana cigarette (I thank him, I curse him) was pink, and I did notice that the fat boy with whom I battled on the bus was brown, and I did notice that each day in that place was a loud reminder that I was under threat by either and each of these shades.