I walked outside. The sky might’ve been twelve feet off the ground. I exited the Gruel Inn, raised my hands upward, and yelled, “That’s not a goddamn memoir—it’s a fucking poem. It’s a series of barely connected rhymed couplets. This is not how I wanted Novel: A Memoir to end! This is not how I wanted Novel: My Big, Fucking Fascinating Autobiography to end!”
My voice echoed back from Gruel Mountain. I unzipped my pants and peed my name out in cursive—Novel—right there in the Gruel parking lot.
Then I heard nothing. I’m talking a silence enveloped Gruel and its sad, tragic, doomed, haunted environs as if a nuclear catastrophe occurred right as I read the last word of my “autobiography.” Disasters.
PART III
“One small dose of venom . . . dropped in that receptive ear, and I’m out, shown the back-door, my years of obsequious service all gone for nothing. Where can a hanger-on be ditched with less fuss than here . . . ?”
—JUVENAL, SATIRE III
23
WHEN I TURNED the step van’s ignition it didn’t make a click. Dead battery, I thought, which wasn’t unnatural. After Maura-Lee purchased her own bread trucks to transport Jesus crust loaves to white-flight private schools, I totally forgot to crank up my own van during all of those days and nights of cranking out nonstop the fifteen couplets I’d amassed like an idiot.
I went to open the flat hood to find that I no longer owned a battery. Nor did I own a radiator, carburetor, alternator, or entire engine block. I thought, Those marching ghost orphans stole my motor.
I released the hood and began walking into town. For a minute I considered going into room 3 in order to look at myself in the minor, to see what I appeared like under undue duress. Maybe I needed to see if my face and hair and eyes looked like those of a “bewildered madman.” But I didn’t do so, seeing as one of the how-to-write-books books said you should never have a first-person narrator haphazardly stray by a mirror, stop, glance at it, then describe what he sees. That’s too amateurish, according to this particular writing scholar, who’d never published a book of fiction, but had three textbooks to his name and had chaired a number of panels at the AWP (Associated Writing Programs) annual conventions, which had to mean something. Me, I didn’t go look in the mirror because there was still a chance that I’d write another autobiography and then would have to say, “After I wrote a two-hundred-page poem, I found out that someone stole my engine; then I went inside to view my bloodshot eyes, sea anemone hair, grizzled chin, and worried forehead.”
I didn’t want to do that. “Poem” and “engine” kind of rhymed, again.
I turned to silent Gruel Mountain, the four-hundred-foot-high hill above Gruel Jungle, and yelled, “At least it wasn’t a fucking haiku you forced me to write. My life’s been longer than a sonnet.”
“Well I’m done,” I said to Jeff the owner when I walked into Roughhouse Billiards some ninety minutes later. “I’ve finished writing my memoir, and let me say that you show up on page one. Could I please have a quadruple bourbon on the rocks, three vodka chasers, two shots of tequila, one Pabst Blue Ribbon, and a pistol stuffed with bullets?”
“Page one! Did you hear that, boys?” Jeff the owner turned toward omnipresent Barry and Larry, my goddamn unknown bastard brothers-in-law. I looked over and saw them standing by the pool table with a fire extinguisher, a five-ounce plastic bottle of Ronsonol, one box of Ohio Blue Tip wooden matches, and an old-fashioned Hot Wheels loop-de-loop track set out for one of their purported shots.
“How long did your story end up to be?” Barry said. “Hold on a minute; I need to go pee.”
That rhymed, I thought. Fucker. Fucking fuck.
I said, “It didn’t end up as long as I thought it would. Long enough, but not as long as I thought. Not an epic. Not a tome. But longer than I thought, seeing as I ain’t yet seventy years old.”
“I didn’t hear you even drive up,” Jeff the owner said.
“That’s because I walked here.” I didn’t go into all the details. I didn’t say how I didn’t look in the mirror at myself.
Jeff the owner got out what’s usually used for a pitcher of draft beer and made my quadruple bourbon. He said, “Walked?! Well I guess that explains your bloodshot eyes, crazy hair, sun-damaged forehead, and stubble. Cheers.”
“Thanks.” I looked around and noticed a slew of red hearts dangling from the ceiling or taped to the walls. “Are you turning into a blood drive bar?”
Jeff the owner said, “It’s Valentine’s Day, idiot. We’re expecting a crowd tonight. Maura-Lee’s coming. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think Bekah might show up—she’s been in town a while. Nancy Ruark’s showing up seeing as the Forty-Five Little Theatre’s production of Oliver! closed down after only one night.”
“Valentine’s Day? How long have I been at the Gruel Inn?” I should’ve counted my bottles and divided by two. “I thought it was something like New Year’s.”
Barry squeezed the fire extinguisher handle and emitted a jet stream of white powder. Larry said, “I told you so.”
“You’ve been gone ten years,” Jeff said. He handed over my three vodkas. “Naw, I’m just japing you some, boy. It is Valentine’s Day, but still 1999.”
I pointed toward the tequila bottle. I should mention that, at the time, South Carolina still served booze in airline minibottle-fashion. It was the law. Jeff the owner—in keeping with the Gruel community—didn’t cotton to the law. “This would be a good place for a bar if you could find a barkeep worthy of getting his customers what they want.”
“Ha-ha,” Jeff said. “Page one, man. Hey, the beer’s on me.”
I said, “Rebekah’s here? Bekah’s here? Kah’s here? Why is she still here? Don’t tell me I’ve been gone so long that everyone pays their hospital and doctors’ bills. Have I been gone that long? Was there some kind of legislation I missed?”
Larry took his cue stick and knocked the Hot Wheels track off one pool table as if he played T-ball. Barry said, “I got one that involves a run of dominoes, a roll of quarters, the game Mousetrap!, an amber vial of penicillin pills I picked out of Paula Purgason’s garbage can, my ant farm, a bull’s skull, two hummingbirds’ nests, a series of Holiday Inn plastic flyswatters, an empty Penrose pickled sausage jar, and”—Barry pulled this out of the back of his pants—“this here catalog of the religious paintings housed in the permanent collection at Bob Jones University.”
Larry said, “Stick that Bob Jones back in your pants,” with some urgency that I didn’t grasp at the time. No, I felt too busy feeling good about being back in civilization, I’ll admit.
Victor Dees burst open the door to Roughhouse. He gave Jeff the owner two fingers for whatever he wanted. Victor looked at me and stared, then to Barry and Larry’s new trick-shot conglomeration. “What you need,” he said. “What you could use is a battery, carburetor, radiator, and entire engine block. Now that would make for a great shot on a table. And I just so happen to have those items over at the store.”
Then he laughed and laughed. I said, “You fucker.”
He said, “Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy VD! V.D.’s Army-Navy Surplus store! It’s my day!”
I thought he might kiss me, but he only grabbed my jowls and shook my head hard with excitement.
Jeff the owner said, “Two Bloody Marys? Did I get that right?”
“Two,” Victor Dees said. “Hey. Hey. It’s Valentine’s Day. What’re you doing here, Novel? I’d think this would be your least favorite day of the year. Well outside of St. Patrick’s Day what with that old man running snakes out of his country.”
Lookit: Victor Dees shouldn’t have known about my snake-handling days, really. I made a note. I thought to myself, Remember this, remember this, in case I ever tried another autobiography. I said, “I didn’t know the date.”
Dees punched my right bicep forty times, swift and easy. He said, “I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“No one did.”
; “Well here we are. Hey, could I get you anything?” He looked behind Jeff at the bar’s selections. No, wait—he looked behind the bar, into the mirror, at his falling-locks hair, his wide eyes, his full wide nose and perfect lips.
I said, “My motor. You could get me my step van’s motor. Peckerhead.”
When my first punch knocked him off the stool I’m almost certain every witness said, “Oh!” or “Ooh!” But when I kicked him in the head and ribs those same people screamed out, “Hey!” They yelled out, “That’s enough!” and “Good goddamn Gruel doesn’t need this kind of reputation seeing as General William Tecumseh Sherman decided against burning down our town and houses seeing as he was Colonel Dill’s friend at West Point,” or something like that. I know that I heard people screaming something about Sherman.
I’m talking I fucking waylaid poor Victor Dees. Hell, I punched my buddy Jeff the owner in the nose when he came around the bar to stop everything. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said, but I don’t know that anyone understood my words, seeing as my voice shook uncontrollably. I said, “Would anyone like to tell me the truth regarding the Gruel Inn? Would anyone here like to tell me what went on where I’ve been spending time aimlessly?”
One of my how-to-write books said that a main character couldn’t be hated, couldn’t be the bad guy, the “antagonist.” I understood that notion, and felt bad about punching out people. Let me say that Freud might’ve been right when he wrote about how a man’s pent-up emotions will get the better of him before he dies. Well Freud might not have said anything about that. It might’ve been in a biography I read about either porn actor John Holmes or sacred Mother Teresa.
Victor Dees got up off the floor and said, “You’re lucky we don’t have an insurance agent or dentist here in Gruel anymore.”
Jeff the owner said, “You’re cut off. From now on you can only get a triple bourbon.”
The jukebox came on playing Merle Haggard. I thought to myself, Man, what’re you doing punching out people? You promised not to do this anymore after that fiasco at Cat’s Cradle when you tried to get up onstage and sing “Little Opie Taylor” with Black Flag. I thought, Bubba, there are probably still homeless people in the United States and you’re worried about—what?—the ex-woman in your life?
Not that I’m any kind of soothsayer or seer, but I thought this on Valentine’s Day, 1999: There’s a chance that Bush’s son will become president, and that means that he’ll invade one of those Arab countries in order to make up for his father’s fuckups, and then the stock market will go down drastically, and if you ever have any money, Novel, you need to keep it in a CD that’ll only garner .0109 percent interest at fucking Bank of America. I thought, But .0109 percent will be better than stocks falling nonstop due to fear, and a deficit that seemed unimaginable, caused by war costs and weird “tax cuts” with which the father promised but didn’t follow through.
Gas would reach two bucks a gallon, even in South Carolina, I thought.
Santayana! History!
I had stood with my heel atop Victor Dees’s neck—my buddy Victor Dees—and thought about how things weren’t right, until Victor Dees screeched out, “Okay. Okay. You’re one of us, man. You’re one of us.”
Jeff the owner said, “You a goddamn liar! You been hanging out in the Gruel Inn taking punch and jab lessons!” He held a bar rag to his nose.
I could do nothing else on Valentine’s Day but hold up my arm and declare, “Drinks on me.”
Bekah walked in pretty as a petit four and said, “I take it you’re finished, finally. I want you to know that we’ve all been behind you on this one. On this little autobiographical ‘challenge’ you’ve set upon yourself. Tell him, Jeff.”
Jeff the owner had a tampon up his nose. He said, “If I get toxic shock syndrome somebody’s going to pay. I ain’t behind anybody as of this moment forward.”
Maura-Lee walked in with Nancy Ruark. They wore matching red taffeta dresses. Nancy said, “I got these from the wardrobe room at the Little Theatre. I think they’re from South Pacific!”
Listen, I expected that dude Milson Willets from Black Mountain College’s archival room to show up and say something about all of this.
I said to Bekah, “I knew you were in town. What happened—did everybody in America decide to pay their bills?” I didn’t tell her how I thought about all of this earlier.
Bekah said, “I know you knew.” She said, “I can work from anywhere, as long’s there’s a phone. I could work out of my car, if I wanted. But I wouldn’t. Guess what the percentage of accidents occur nowadays while a driver’s talking on the phone. You wouldn’t believe it. It’s worse than drunks.”
Let me say that I felt more duped than the time the lieutenant governor asked me to write a speech for the North Carolina Daughters of the American Revolution, I did, and he said the opposite of what I wrote. Oh he’d caught on, evidently. To Bekah I said, “A hundred and one percent.”
“You’re close,” she said. ‘It would be more if the people in Gruel didn’t get in wrecks driving over their tin cans attached with strings holding cans together to talk, ha-ha.”
Maura-Lee, Nancy, Jeff the owner, and Victor Dees laughed. Barry and Larry held their cue sticks and looked our way. I said, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Kah.” I wove my hand around. “Drinks on me!”
I won’t lie and say that I didn’t lead people on to believe I had finished a much-anticipated, full-length autobiography called Novel: A Heartbreaking Memoir of Incredible Philosophical Depth that would be published up in New York City by, say, Harcourt. Oh, I acted all fool and played the rogue.
Somewhere along the line, evidently, I whispered drunk out of my mind into tiny Nancy Ruark’s scalloped ear, “I’ve always thought I could be an actor. You know, in college—in undergraduate school—I almost took a course called The History of English Theatre, from Liturgy to Reformation, Minus Shakespeare. I didn’t, but I almost did. Say, let’s you and me go outside and do some improvisation.” I only know this because I woke up in room 3 at the Gruel Inn later, on the floor, surrounded by Bekah, Maura-Lee, Nancy, Barry, Larry, Jeff the owner, Victor Dees, a woman who swore she was Mrs. Victor Dees, a fellow who said he owned Gruel BBQ and Pig-Petting Zoo, some old ne’er-do-well boy named Sammy Koon who said he’d buy anything off of me I wanted to sell, and Paula Purgason the amateur real estate agent. It wasn’t an orgy situation. We all seemed to fall out while in our clothes, and I can only assume that I invited everybody back to my abode in order to drink whatever leftover booze I had while writing my memoir. When Victor Dees said the next morning, “Yeah, you’ll be the perfect history teacher and lacrosse coach over at Gruel Normal,” I remembered what happened, kind of.
Nancy Ruark said, “Oh, Novel. Say that soliloquy again.”
My half-wife said, “Be warned.”
24
THE COMMUNITY, without my knowledge, gathered money and donations in order to renovate the Gruel Inn. I’m talking the nonelected town officials decided that the Gruel Inn deserved new Sheetrock in each room, new tile floors, a paint job throughout, and perhaps a terra-cotta roof. “My people waltz to a different Jew’s harp twang,” Bekah told me inside the bare office. “They think you might be their economic savior, you know. They believe that once your opus comes out, pilgrims from all over will want to come here and hang out. They’ll want to pay their respects. Like they do for Faulkner or Thomas Wolfe or that bar down in Key West for Hemingway.”
I had, of course, told exactly no one the truth about my “opus.” To Bekah I said, “Did you kill your father? Did you have a hand in the death of your mom and brother?”
“I thought Graywood Regional Memorial would do that job for me,” she said, which didn’t quite answer my question. She said, “If people come to see where Novel Akers holed up to write his autobiography, then they’ll certainly have to spend money on the square. Victor and Jeff are looking into how to get a Motel 8 or Econo Lodge franchise maybe over on Old Old Greenville R
oad on some farmland owned by Paula Purgason. Oh, they have plans.”
There stood no booze bottles in my skeletal abode. After losing my temper two days earlier I vowed the wagon, at least until St. Patrick’s Day. “Let me get this straight,” I said. I held my right hand with my left, lifted my knee against them, and tried to bring a coffee mug to my mouth in order to stop shaking. “You’ve been living with Maura-Lee for, what, more than a few days?”
“A few months, more like it. I sold Mom’s house to Maura-Lee, of course. There were no hidden deals. No strings. I went back to Charlotte like I told you. Then I realized that A) I didn’t like my job; B) it might not’ve been exactly moral; C) I could continue my job anywhere what with e-mail, faxes, and cell phones; D) Maura-Lee could rent me out a couple rooms from my own house, et cetera, and so on.”
I wished that I’d’ve known all of this while writing my memoir. It couldn’t have been all that difficult to tag this on toward the end. “That makes sense,” I said, though it didn’t. My main concern that morning, for some reason, dealt with controlling my shakes. “What’s your boss think about all that? How’s he feel about having a mistress 150 miles away?”
Bekah stood up and stretched her arms upward. She looked at the missing ceiling and rafters. “Technically, I own the motel. We’re hoping you’ll agree to let us auction off everything you found tucked up in the walls or buried out back. We could use the proceeds for building supplies. Until the project’s done you can either live here, or take a room at my old house. At Maura-Lee’s. I won’t bother you. She certainly won’t. As a matter of fact you can move into Maura-Lee’s for free and I’ll move out here. Maura-Lee has agreed to move out here with me, too.”
I spilled coffee on my knee. “Are you and Maura-Lee lesbian lovers? Is that what’s going on?”
Novel Page 18
