Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1

by Derrick Brown

  Now, listen, in truth, Patton was a fumbling dolt of a man. Comparatively, take any passionate warrior of the last 300 years and place them next to Lydia Handlestock and I will overshadow them like the moon to sun. I put the Lips in Eclipse, the Cat and the Skills in the Catskills, now suck it.

  Listen, I’m not trying to berate you or lift myself up up up. You see, if I disturb you.. you will feel something and that is the first step to recovering your…oh, how do they put it in Indonesia…your nuts. I don’t know what happened to you kids up here on Mars but it seems like when you’re surround yourselves with nothing possibility vanishes. Passion turns vanilla.

  You know, I came here with great enthusiasm. I used to think that space was our last ocean, a place we dumped wishes not people. Not our future. I know that each and every one of your parents is secretly aroused by the idea of educating your child on Mars for one million dollars…but it’s vain.. so unnecessary.

  I mean, have you seen the smooth skin of Spain. Felt the heaviness of Ravensburg or seen the gorgeous transvestites of San Francisco.

  I’m telling you, you don’t need to travel to gain experience. What you need are bad experiences because right now all of you are a bunch of sexless, drug-less, storyless derivatives of your parents…blaaaah. More singing. Aaaaa.

  Maybe I cam down a bit hard on you. Don’t get me wrong, your performances last night were…atrocious. However, I realize now, that maybe you aren’t the source.

  I have a gift to give you and if you can all stop being nerdy pricks for two seconds I will.

  You see, I stand here with a heart full of failures where valves used to be. Veins I used like cables to pull myself from one shit hole to the next. Thighs like steering wheels from having my legs at ten and two too many times. My life became like space…black, black, black…with little specks of white.

  Now, who here knows why I’m saying this you in the middle of what should have been a very normal commencement address.

  That’s right, because I did have one prepared…This address was going to be…blah blah reach for the stars…blah blah go for your dreams…a lotta outer space puns and alien fondling jokes. Starfish have no brains, don’t be a starfish, be a star, I had a coupla great Battlestar Galacta zingers too…oh well. What’s honest is more important. Honest passion is a good performance.

  Lesson one in this passion play.

  Enjoy getting ripped a new donut hole.

  Let’s start with last night’s gig. The Orion Theatre. 1900 hours. Curtain. You played a college kid who hot boxes his space pod hookah who wants to be a hit man but deep down inside he’s a good guy. You made me wish I was stoned…as in BEAT TO THE DEATH WITH VERY SMALL ROCKS.

  His best friend here is gay with AIDS and cancer.

  What a winning combination! Throw in retarded and you’ve got the trifecta.

  You win the Oscar but not my attention.

  Listen, make fun of what you hold dear. Don’t respect anything too much. Let fear guide you. You write your brains out, you perform your brains, you fuck your brains out on the carcasses of critics…and you let people with hang ups deal with their own mazes inside of themselves. You say to them, “Fuck you, I’m right, you’re empty now you owe mama head you walking complex.”

  Now.

  Lesson two.

  Go hungry for your art, but don’t starve.

  I have starved. I have so starved in the middle of my own storms.

  Huh? Let me explain to you the song of the starving Sea Lion.

  On Earth there is a cold region known as Antarctica. Sea Lions quietly roam under vast glowing miles of blue ice. Swimming in the quiet and most heavenly arena of underwater glaciers while storms riot above them. They need air holes in the ice to breathe and the sea lions keep the holes open by munching them with their teeth but.. they need their teeth to hunt.

  So they can either starve to death or suffocate to death. Sea lions die young…the older ones are weak and skinny. Still breathing. Still wishing they had teeth…but there’s just too many storms pushing too much ice. Do you know why I’m saying this?

  (to an offstage character)

  No. No. I don’t want the pills today.

  Why? Because I’m talking to the kids.

  What do you mean, what kids? The kids right here. You can’t see them?

  Well, they can’t see you…Just let me finish…Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me! I NEED TO AAAAGH. FINE, I WILL TAKE YOUR DAMN PILLS!

  It’s just…I was feeling something… just promise me you’ll finish telling them what I was talking about…it goes like this…

  black, black, black, with little specks of white…got it?

  black, black, black…with little specks…

  of white.

  x

  THE ROYAL DOGS OF TEXAS

  Hummingbirds. Always seems like there are hummingbirds everywhere in the South, stealin’ juice cause their instinct can do no other. A hunter cracks peanuts in his deer stand. Not a serious hunter. Not the kind that needs to eat.

  The other kind. The kind who shoots stuff as a hobby. A pick-up truck backfires.

  A mosquito dies between the applause of a hand and a neck.

  The trees do their slave dance. The sun is out for blood. Ice cubes rattle in a tea glass.

  A screen door yawns like a baby waking up.

  Other than that, stillness.

  Few places are quieter than Alto, Texas. I’m not sure if I should tell you why.

  This part of the land is teeming with quiet desolation. Desperate places make everyone shut-up.

  It is strange. No one talks about what happened to John T. Royal. No one talks.

  The only one I commiserate with is Merle.

  I always say the same joke to him when I see him.

  “How’s the day Merle? You look a little Haggard.”

  When he looks up, it looks like he’s about to spit.

  “The day is what it is, Tom.”

  The years have not been good to Merle. We got close cause he’s old and gets the stomach flu and I’d come over and give him some 7-up and place a wet towel on his butthole. He says it’s the best feelin’ and we joke about it. He’s from Austin so he’s weird. I don’t know what he’s doin’ here. He don’t know what he’s doin here. He is the only man I know without photographs.

  You figure a man in his late 70’s would have some pictures, and if he didn’t have pictures, he must be holdin’ a whole world o’hurt that he never wanted to see again.

  He kinda holds his hurt in his shoulders and I try and drag conversation out of him.

  “You never ever told me ‘bout what you used to do.” I spun the cubes in my tea. His tea always had tea leave chunks in it and the flavor was a bit bitter.

  It was always cold and cold beats flavor any day in the South.

  “Lots of stuff I suppose.” Merle wiped the drool from his pillow as he laid face down next to the wood paneling on a cheap cot. “It musta been 30 some odd years ago.”

  “Well, like what. Shoot me straight.”

  “Government work, you know. Not Spy stuff or anything. Straight.”

  Merle closed his eyes.

  “You plant trees with nerds? Spill it. You one of those Rambo types that don’t like talkin’ about it?”

  He rolled over onto his back and sat up. “No. I’ll tell you. I don’t know why I feel like tellin’ you. Maybe cause it’s been bottled up too long. I worked for the Secret Service when I was older than you. I had been applying for 6 years and when I made it to the fourth level and passed, I moved from Alto to D.C.”

  “You guarded the president?” I wasn’t gonna believe him but thought I’d listen and might have a good chuckle, depending on how grand the lies were.

  “No. His wife. She was a great lady. Wife of the 37th president. Her name was Pat, Pat Nixon. Born in Nevada. Named after St. Patrick. Ma died at 13, Pa, passed at 18.

  Amazing woman. She got a job as a janitor and made her own way. Tough l
ady.

  A real lady. She shook everyone’s hand. Even lepers in Panama. She got real close to people till there was no one left to meet.”

  The details pulled me deeper into the truth. I can smell a bullshitter. This was the real deal. Merle looked nervous, like he was about to propose.

  “I shot someone. I made a mistake.”

  “Uh huh.” I tried to make it seem like that’s what secret service agents do.

  I tried to pass him the honey roasted peanuts, but his mind had gone elsewhere and ignored me.

  His breath began to quiver. He reached over and turned on the lamp.

  “I shot someone. I shot Bill Baumdart in the service of the first lady, Pat Nixon. I severed a portion of his spinal cord with the bullet and he couldn’t walk for the rest of his life. News said he was a track and field coach. He’s dead now from old age. Every day that passes, the more I get near the end, I get more scared.

  I’m scared to meet him up there, Tom. I don’t wanna die.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I made a mistake, Tom. I think about it every long day. He leaped a barrier to get an autograph as she was getting in the limousine. You can’t do that. The barrier was blue and said ‘police’ on it. I watched him running towards the car and readied my pistol. I hadn’t slept in about 2 days, Tom. The Gov works ya like a dog when they’re short-handed. I loved working with Pat. I woulda died for her. They let me go at her request but didn’t press charges. They told me to vanish. I never saw Pat again. That’s all I wanted. I came back. I been here, sittin’ around, Tom.”

  Merle kept saying my name at the end of his sentences and it kept sounding like the deepest, hardest, scarlet of grief. He turned out the light, realizing he had turned it on for no reason.

  I stood up and didn’t really know what to say. “I’m gonna go grab some booze.

  You need to cheer up and let shit like that go. It’s their fault for overworkin’ ya, right?”

  “Hm. Booze ain’t gonna make me smile, Tom. You know that. I ain’t that type.

  But damn right I’ll take some.”

  “Have you ever smiled, Merle?”

  I could see his eyes scrolling backwards through that dark memory box. “Yes. When I was a boy. When I was a little boy.”

  “And you don’t have any pictures of it.”

  “No. I don’t. Uh, I know of one in existence but I don’t have it. I don’t need to have it.”

  I had never seen Merle talk this much sober. There were little white cobwebs of saliva forming at the corners of his mouth. I grabbed a dishrag and wiped ‘em clean.

  “You gonna tell me where that picture is, Captain. No one’s gonna believe you ever smiled without a photograph to prove it.”

  “I think I gave it to John Royal, years ago for buying me a baseball bat when I was a kid. He’s gone too. He told me to hit as many home runs and break as many windows as possible. 12. I dunno if he kept the portrait. That place is a shithole flophouse now. John Royal was a good man.”

  “Well you know what, I’m fixin’ to get us some Coors Light and I’m gonna take a peek and I’ll be right back.”

  Merle stood. Merle rarely stood and he spoke with a gravelly fear in his throat.

  “Do not go on that property. Forget it, Tom. Please.”

  “No one’s gonna…Oh. Come on, Merle. You don’t believe that stuff about the devil haunting Royal’s joint do you? That’s crap the Baptists made up to keep people from desecrating his property.”

  “It ain’t the devil, Tom. I been there and it feels…it feels heavy. I’m sure the place has been ransacked by kids anyway. I’m sorry. It just ain’t worth it, it just ain’t worth your time, that’s all.”

  “ O.K. relax. I’ll be back in a spell. You want PBR, tall boys or Coors Light?”

  “Anything’s fine. Coors Light. Tom. I’m serious.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Driving down FM180, he had to know that I couldn’t help myself. It would be like gold to see Ol’ Merle smilin’ like a shiny nickel, even if it was in black and white.

  I needed to make him remember. If the place was trashed, it would make me want to go inside even more, especially if folks were still saying it was haunted.

  I think remembering is good. I once thought I was in love again because a song was playing on the radio by Johnny Cash. ‘The first time, ever I saw your face…” It made me remember exactly how I felt holding my wife to be in the storm outside the A+W rootbeer. We got rain inside of our root beer floats and drank ‘em anyway. That divorce cleared years ago.

  How does one go from being a real daisy to a screeching, ball twisting, hog of a bitch? It is mind blowin’ isn’t it? The answer is, you stop remembering your root beer and you only see the dirty laundry.

  I had to make him remember something good before he passed away.

  I felt like he had months now.

  I thought it’d do him some good to remember his youth.

  You look at bastards on T.V. The lawyers and the superstars. You forget they used to be kids. You stare down at the person you’re fuckin’ and you forget they used to not know how to talk. You gotta remember.

  John T. Royal’s grounds are a bit creepy. Bums used to live here. He left his home to nobody. I guess he didn’t have much time to write one on account of the feds blowin’ his brains out. The state didn’t want it cause there was too much drama surrounding it after his murder.

  The weeds are tall and sweeping. It looks like a plantation after the civil war.

  Smells like sage.

  Some say where I stand is hallowed ground.

  There are dogs in this soil.

  I don’t mean bad men. I mean dogs. Hundreds of loyal dogs.

  Some were killed by rifle…and some were buried alive. Let me tell you about it.

  John T. Royal was a loner, claimed to have a mirror factory. No one knew what kind of equipment that needed, so no one questioned the strange machines on his property. The feds spotted it and figured it to be a moonshine business.

  This was a dry town in the driest of times. The story goes that they sent two agents in to talk with John.

  John Royal was Irish so they shoulda expected a bit of a fireball. What they didn’t expect was a valley of dogs. Hundreds of them. Eatin’ each others bones.

  Wallowing in the heaven of the wilderness, waiting to protect their master, at any cost.

  Those two agents never returned to headquarters. Rumor had it that John sicked the dogs on ‘em to eat em to death. One week later, the Feds just about called out the whole Texas National Guard, and they wanted that boy’s head.

  One of the soldiers misfired a shot at a dog trying to gnaw through the fence and John Royal came out with guns blazing, firing with vengeance and people around here knew his aim was true.

  He had sawed off shotguns strapped to his legs and revolvers holstered on the inside of his pants. Papers said he was in a rage. The dogs were protecting him, piling their bodies in front of him like bunkers. They said with every dog that went down, John would whistle, drop to the ground and reload behind the carcass of a Rottweiler or Great Dane. When he finally went down, which reports say did take awhile, John T. Royal let out some sort of chirp and the other hundred or so dogs halted and sat at attention. Quiet and no longer growling.

  The toll was 22 guardsmen down, 113 dogs and one John T. Royal. The guard, moved in and on command massacred those dogs. Every one of them. They were smart dogs and they were plain murdered. The ones that were still breathing, they buried them too and tossed John’s body in the mass grave with them. It was a mess and this was the most effective way they could devise to clean it up. The sad part is they never found the bodies of those two agents, who some say were waxed by The Italians in Houston.

  I enter the house and it does feel heavy. It doesn’t amaze me that there is graffiti everywhere or mud, but there are little broken pieces of mirrors all over the floor. There is a wind whipping through this house that wasn’t outsi
de.

  It smells like piss. I have no idea where to look. I’m sure there’s rats in every drawer.

  I feel this amazing sensation wash over me and I close my eyes. I begin walking.

  I am now in the basement. I am being led. My hand lifts and touches a handle on a cupboard. I open my eyes.

  There is no need for me to tell you what I saw because you wouldn’t believe me. But I know this for sure. He was making mirrors and he was making moonshine and I will never return to that house.

  An hour later I pulled up to Merle’s raggedy trailer.

  I handed him a can of mildly warm beer and behind the can was the picture.

  He touched it and began weeping.

  “Oh my God. You found it. Lord, I was a runt. I remember those shoes and how they always smelled terrible. My mother made those shorts out of…”

  We both kinda smiled. Merle’s smile still looked he was about to spit. It’s good to notice. It’s good to remember. I’ll start with the morning.

  The sun.

  A screen door.

  Ice cubes.

  Trees.

  A mosquito.

  A pick-up truck.

  Hummingbirds.

  A field where cats are afraid to cross.

  THE WEAPONS FORMED AGAINST ME

  DID PROSPER

  There is a bar in in town where people want to talk to me about more than just the weather.

  Someone always buys for me, which is a perk.

  After the first shot I talk about the town and progress.

  The second shot I break discourse on politics and the need for making the discourse on good blowjobs less taboo.

  The third shot I kinda just sit there, connivin’ about how to get back into a rig and of course about how much I miss blowjobs.

  The fourth shot I drift into the premise of who I would kill for 50 dollars, which often leads to the Easter Bunny and Phil Collins takin’ the top slots.

  And the fifth shot gets me talkin’ about the nature of black angels.

  It’s not that it’s all I wanna talk about.