Zebra Skin Shirt

by Gregory Hill

  the quarterback sneak

  the wishbone formation

  For the record, I don’t complain nearly as much as Veronica claims. But that’s not the point. I’m not the point. Veronica is the point, and the pointiest part of that point is that The Blad’s pointiest part recently penetrated her privatest part to which I alone am privy, or so I thought.

  The diary was floating in front of my face. It’s a comfortable way to read a book, with it hovering there like that. I plucked it out of the air and threw it. It left my hand and went on pause just beyond my fingertips.

  I snatched my onion engagement ring from the floor and brought it to Sandy, who was still standing behind the counter, ready to pour coffee.

  “Will you marry me?”

  I nodded her head for her.

  I slid the onion ring onto her finger.

  Storm out, past the door, to the parking lot. Goddamn this Alaskan summer. It should be nighttime.

  I stomped circles on the dirt, I walked from one end of town to the next. I returned to the parking lot and sat on the diner’s AstroTurfed front step and put my head in my hands and moaned.

  9

  I woke up in front of Cookie’s Palace Diner with dried salt on my cheeks and a jaw sore from all the tooth gnashing. When you’re hopeless and brokenhearted, it can feel like your brain is collapsing in upon itself while your body is dissolving into the air. But not me, not when I wake up on an AstroTurfed front step at 7:23 PM on September 1, 2009 with dried tears of deceit on my face. Narwhal Slotterfield doesn’t dissolve. Narwhal Slotterfield blows the whistle and stops the game and decides who will win and who will lose.

  Cookie’s van is unlocked. I open the door and climb inside. Cookie’s my friend. He makes food for me. I check the glove box. Cookie’s name is Darrel Swets. Scattered upon the passenger seat is a stack of CDs: The Rolling Stones, solo and otherwise. Underneath the passenger seat is a bottle of Southern Comfort, which confirms that Cookie’s favorite musician is Keith Richards. In the eighties, Keith Richards was a walking advertisement for Southern Comfort. Every magazine interview included a photo of him sloughing sallow-cheeked next to an out-of-focus bottle of SoCo.

  Cookie really likes Mr. Richards. The van contains both of his solo albums as well as a CD bootleg of the pre-prison recordings, not nearly as legendary as the Charlie Parker pre-Bellevue sessions, nor as over-rated.

  We’re discussing a medium which I cannot experience. Music is the sound of the wind in my sinus cavity. Music is the sound of my skull conveying my howls of cuckoldry into the saddle, stirrup, and drum of my inner ear.

  I’m extraordinarily upset about Vero’s diary.

  Thru the doorway of the van, I can see thru the doorway of the Palace, where I see her at the table, the whites of her eyes peering from under her lids. Her expression—which I had rendered in an attempt to give her dignity—doesn’t resemble an embalmed corpse so much as it does an orgasm-in-progress.

  I’m too upset to think of a specifically crazy manner of acting out, so I will get drunk instead. I hell-storm out of the van and whack the Southern Comfort bottle against the outside wall of the Palace. The snapped-off neck is in my hand, the rest of the bottle remains intact, resting against the wall.

  Do I not bleed? Do I not coagulate? Yes, to both.

  The broken collar of the bottle’s neck reflects prettily in the orange sun. Orange. I need to expand my color vocabulary. The sun was an orange. There, it’s a metaphor now. The liquor remains trapped in the neckless bottle. Another metaphor for you.

  I place the bottle on the ground, liquor still within, neck missing, and—wait—first I tear the screen from the screen door at the front of the Palace and place it on the ground. I place the bottle thereupon. I stomp hard upon the bottle. Nothing. So I find a cinderblock—there’s always a cinderblock when you need one—and lift it up and bring it down upon the bottle, which dis-integrates in the original sense of the word, being that it becomes un-integrated. I lift the window screen, sieving the broken glass with it. Mercifully, there are few shards, and all of them are large enough to get captured by the screen. The SoCo has been successfully sieved.

  I float the screen aside and bend down and bite the checkered, puckered blob of hillbilly sugar piss. I choke down every drop. And so here I am, writing in twilight when it should be dark, sitting directly across from the woman who gave me joy and filled me with betrayal.

  I will sleep this off in the back of Cookie’s van. It’s safe there. It has a mattress, and it’s devoid of sexual stains.

  10

  This is not survivor behavior. This is loser behavior. I am not a loser. I am the motherfucker who determines who wins and who loses. I have a plan.

  Step two, I will go to Denver and I will have a word with The Blad.

  Step one, I have already accomplished. And that is precisely why I pointed the pistol that I found in Cookie’s glove-box.

  Let me state this more clearly. This morning, I found a forty-five caliber pistol in Cookie’s glove-box. I sat there in the passenger seat and I put the barrel against my temple and squeezed the trigger. As expected, nothing happened. I did not expect to expire. It was a symbolic act. The old Narwhal Slotterfield is dead. Long lurch the new Narwhal Slotterfield.

  I remained poised for a brief moment, looking at my gun-to-temple self in the little mirror on the flipped visor, a classically-trained cry for help.

  I said to me, “Cry for help? You can’t even hear yourself, dipshit.”

  I loosened my grip and slid out from underneath the weapon and exited the van. The gun remains poised there, hovering in front of the visor mirror, as if a ghost is aiming it at another ghost.

  I will go to Denver and confront Blad the Impaler. I will point a gun at him and pull the trigger and I will walk back to Holliday and I will feel better and, if I’m of the mood, I will forgive Veronica.

  When there are no consequences, there are no rules except feel better.

  Also of note, when I broke the neck off the bottle of Southern Comfort, the blister on my finger—the blister I received from touching hot fry grease—popped. This was the source of the blood that I’d mentioned, which did coagulate. Oval scab. No sign of infection. Seems doubtful that I’d be at risk for such a thing as an infection, as all the bugs in the world are in a state of suspension. I suspect that I am impervious to illness.

  11

  Fill a backpack with water bottles and socks. Borrow Cookie’s sharpest knife. Visualize myself walking a hundred and fifty miles to Denver.

  For my final act before departure, I entered Cookie’s van and extracted the floating pistol and brought it to the Palace, where I placed it in Sandy’s left hand. I wrapped her fingers loosely around the grip and pointed the gun toward Veronica, seated across the room. The act is imaginary, harmless, like a tired dog’s dream, all kicking legs and angry yips. Feel free to misinterpret it as an act of misogynistic aggression.

  I spent an afterlunch with the Colorado map from the glove box of my car spread out on Sandy’s counter. Once I start walking, the first town I’ll see is Dorsey, twenty miles west. I’ve heard of this place, Dorsey, but I can’t remember what I’ve heard. Probably I heard someone say, “What kind of jackanape calls a town ‘Dorsey’?”

  After Dorsey, it’s ten miles to a town called Endurance, then twenty more miles to Abila. And so on. Another speck of a town every ten to twenty miles. 150 miles to Denver. In between the towns, there will surely be farmhouses full of dinner for the pickin’. I can pack light, is what I’m saying. No need for manna or waybread or Jimmie Dean Christmas sausage.

  I ate the last of the diner’s world-famous pies, then I combed Sandy’s hair. She works hard. She deserves to be pretty.

  Second-to-last act before finally departing: I opened my mouth wide and placed my lips over Veronica’s nose. Her nose did not twitch.

  “Goodbye, my larva. I’d linger, but I’m not very chatty at the moment. Don’t mind the gun. Guns don’t work.
It’s ironic, is all, for this is the age we live in. I’m describing, not complaining.”

  Final act: I removed Vero’s chair from underneath her. Now she’s sitting on nothing. If I had a working camera, I’d take a picture, it’s so silly.

  All loaded up, with my backpack strapped over my shoulders and a pair of well-used officially-sanctioned referee shoes on my feet, I gave a salute and exited Cookie’s Palace Diner.

  Because I’m impossibly optimistic, I tried to start my car. I could barely get the key to turn in ignition. And even when I did manage to twist the key into “start”, the starter did not start.

  Still impossibly optimistic, I found a beat-up ten-speed bicycle leaning against one of the homes in Holliday. I pushed a pedal and the chain almost moved. I put my full weight on it and the bike crept. The dominos in the chain links get progressively less connected to my feet and, to summarize, it’s incredibly inefficient to ride a bicycle. Bummer, but I wouldn’t say it’s a surprise.

  This is going to be a haul, full of adventure and things that don’t move. Tell me again why I’m doing this? Because I don’t know what else to do.

  I walked Route 36, the path that, in a moving world, Vero and I should have taken in my car, days ago, tummies filled with polysaturated fats, the two of us happily engaged, Vero already planning to destroy the dastardly diary and the memories it contained.

  The exercise was invigorating at first. I would close my eyes and feel as if I were floating soundlessly, the warm sun at my eyelids, the clouds of the hellfire storm in the near distance, and a chasm of disappointment receding behind me.

  The landscape isn’t worth a mention. It’s flat. It’s hot. The plains are a place that doesn’t tell you anything.

  There’s no wind to cool me, which blows because walking is more strenuous than I anticipated.

  Half a mile down the highway, I came upon a big rig, the same one I descried on my first excursion out the Palace’s front door, the excursion wherein I’d retrieved the suitcases and Vero’s diary. The truck is a Mack, turns out. I’d never been in a semi before, so I climbed in. The driver was pressing the truck’s dashboard lighter against a cigarette. Older fellow, in his sixties. He had a cut-off beer can between his legs, full of brown spit. Driving, smoking, and chewing at the same time, a testimony to American can-do-ism.

  As a further tribute to Americandoism, the fellow had covered the entire ceiling of his cab with images of naked women, downloaded from leather-and-fruit fetishist websites, printed out from a streaky inkjet printer. How tender. A man drives his truck and all the cherubim in his heavens are sitting naked astride black-saddled watermelons. It’s a miracle, this world where anonymous women of the internet will go to such great lengths to provide an opportunity for three-alarm nicotine addicts to get their hard rocks soft.

  Except my truck-driving man had on a wedding ring. The women in those print-outs were not his wives, at least according to the photo in his wallet, which meant Cletus was extra-maritally lustful. As of very recently, this sort of thing has become a touchy subject.

  Against my better judgment, I crawled into Cletus’s sleeper. The sleeper is the area behind the cab where the driver sleeps away those lonely nights on the road. I had never been in a sleeper.

  I lit my way with Cletus’s electric lighter, whose candlepower was weak but sufficient. The little room was downright luxurious. A proper bed, flat-screen TV, multiple speakers, walls upholstered with scarlet fabric. Tacked to the scarlet fabric were photos of actual women, taken by Cletus himself, whose belt buckle I recognized in multiple shots. Lots of different women. No wedding rings. When they aren’t riding melons, Cletus prefers ’em blonde on top and bald down low, ideally with a battery-powered device within.

  There was no accounting for what combination of fruit juice and Fruit of the Loom juice had dried upon these sheets. I exited the sleeper, leaving the lighter hovering a few inches above the bed.

  Back in the truck’s cockpit, I pulled the fetish pics from the ceiling and flattened them against the windshield, so that if time did ever resume, Cletus would be blinded and surprised and hopefully drive into a ditch. Just to prove that I’m not a monster, I buckled his seatbelt for him.

  What’s in the trailer, I wondered. Coal? Gravel? Baby doll heads? I went round back and climbed up the ladder, peeked under the canvas cover. This one was filled to the brim with seeds. Wheat, I think.

  I had an idea. I crawled under the canvas and lay atop the wheat. I scooched back and forth, pushed the grain about until it held an impression of me. It fit very comfortably, with even pressure on all my backside body parts. I once sat on a memory foam bed in a mattress store. This was just as good. I think we could market it as the GrainBed. Slogan: It Grows On You.

  Under the tarp, in the dark, on the wheat, I slept and then I awoke and now I’m sitting on the side of the road next to the semi, writing an account of my first half-mile toward Denver, which you have just read.

  12

  I walked until I came upon a farmhouse on the right side of the road. I hope they’re having omelets for dinner.

  This being my first breaking-and-entering of the post-time era, I was especially careful about opening the door and walking on the carpet and crossing the laundry room into the kitchen. Alas, no omelets. The Missus had prepared a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches and was about to bring them out to her hubby and the two children, who were watching a car commercial on their wall-mounted television.

  One of the children, the girl, was smirking at her cell phone. The text thereupon read, TWAT.

  The room, shades drawn to optimize the TV’s glow, provided a showcase environment for the colloid effect, which is to say the shafts of sunlight that penetrated the gaps in the shades rendered visible all the dust bits floating in the air. When you look at a sunbeam, you’re seeing sunlight reflected off bits of floating dandruff.

  The scene was much prettier than my description. It was beautiful, to tell the truth. I dragged my finger thru one of the sunbeams. This cleared out the dust, leaving an empty line in the beam. I traced a smiley face. A hovering sunbeam smile, crooked and childish. My first self-portrait.

  After eating four grilled-cheese sandwiches at the dining room table, I’m already nostalgic for the pies at Cookie’s Palace. Don’t get down, buddy. As I approach Denver, I’m sure to come across an all-day breakfast wafflecake establishment. Flo’s pies will evaporate from my mind just as soon as my mouth gets a load of the pop and ooze of a fried egg.

  Veronica has a peculiar thing with the eggs. She likes hers scrambled, which is not particularly peculiar. However, after she cracks the eggs into the bowl, but before she whips them into homogeneity, she carefully plucks out each umbilical cord. I didn’t know eggs had umbilical cords. She pointed it out the very first time we broke fast at her place. She was wearing her plaid bathrobe, cinched up tight around her throat. Her feet were bare. A CD of her oldest sister’s metal band was playing softly in the background. And she said, “Look, Narwhal. See that white thing there?” The white thing was tiny, like a stretchy wet booger. “As the yolk turns into a chick, that cord sucks nutrients out of the white, which isn’t white, but clear, clearly.” Then she reached in with her fingers with nails that were raggedy and covered with flaking black enamel and plucked each of the boogers out of the eggs and flicked them into the garbage disposal.

  She said, “Isn’t that better?”

  This is the woman who recently cheated on me with a man who taught her how to do beer bongs and shoplift candy. You’ve cut my umbilical cord, Vero. I’m a quivering egg and you’ve plucked out my last strand of contact to the larder of hope. I’ll whine if I want.

  Having pilfered food from this family, I regretted that I hadn’t stolen any cash from the pornographic truck driver’s wallet. I only had three dollars on me. I slid the bills into the Missus’s left back pocket. Her jeans were on the tight end of the scale, as is the fashion. I got the bills in far enough to stay put, but not
so far that I’d be considered a pervert. I hope she’s the type who checks all the pockets before doing the laundry. I assume she’s the laundry-doer in this household. Don’t cry. It’s society that’s sexist, not me. And anyway, aside from the découpaged “Footprints” poem above the fireplace, this family seems pretty decent. I visited every room in the house and found nothing but normal, devoted human behavior. The bathroom light was on, thank God, and I got a view of my face. My beard was coming in thick. I borrowed the Mister’s razor and dry-shaved, leaving little hairs floating around the room. Yes, dry-shaving hurts.

  The shaving gave me an idea. I dug around the bathroom drawers until I found a pair of hair-scissors and then I cut all my hair off and then shaved the stubble—painful, yes—so now I am bald as a balloon. The look doesn’t flatter me. My head has one of those asymmetrical peaked ridges running to the left of center, typical of tall men.

  But my head, you see, is also a timekeeper. They say hair grows half an inch every month. Roughly an eighth of an inch per week. Which means I can now inaccurately track the long-term passage of time via my pate. Further, when I wish to measure the short-term, I can count seventy beats of my heart. Assuming I’m at rest, that’s a minute. Hot damn, I’m clever.

  Ba bump. Ba bump.

  I’ve been sitting on the toilet with my fingers on my jugular for seventeen minutes.

  I took a nap in the master bedroom, woke up disoriented, and now I’m ready to hit the road. I hid “Footprints” under the mattress, bowed to my hosts, and marched on.

  13

  In two more days of road walking and house hopping, I’ve picked up nearly twenty more miles, as reckoned by the green mile markers. Already, my legs and lungs are building stamina in this watery atmosphere. Soon, I’ll be making fifteen miles a day. I’m coming for you, The Blad.

  I encounter a car, truck, motorcycle, semi, or other conveyomobile roughly every two miles. They’re driven mostly by people staring straight ahead, every human a dummy from one of those fake towns they used to blow up in atom bomb tests in the fifties. I do come across the occasional scene: an unsmiling couple, the blanched teenager with a half-empty bottle of Robitussin in his lap, the car driven by a man in a clown costume. In the interest of making time, I usually just peek thru the windows and then walk on by.