by Dan O'Shea
“I contribute.”
“How?”
“My art.”
Shepherd laughed suddenly, then covered his mouth with one bony hand. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. I’m an artist. You’re not. It’s very simple for me and absolutely inconceivable to you. My music is my life. If I adulterate that in any way --”
“Your music? What music?”
“My singing.”
“Your karaoke.”
“It isn’t karaoke, you thick-witted old fuck. For them, for the proles, for the weekend pissheads, it’s karaoke. It’s a bit of fun. If you ever had the common decency to see me perform, you’d know that I fucking soar, I fucking transcend. So don’t tell me I’m not an artist, don’t tell me I don’t deserve a little comfort while I pursue that art. I’ve already given back a thousand times more than I’ve ever taken --”
“Trevor.”
“Fuck yourself.”
“I don’t appreciate being spoken to like that.”
“And I don’t appreciate you trying to tear my fucking life apart.”
“I’m not. Your mother --”
“Is not yours, Shepherd. She’s not yours. She doesn’t belong to you. She belongs to me.”
“Not anymore.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. I looked at Rob, then pointed at Shepherd. “Hit him.”
Rob’s brow lowered. “You what?”
“Hit him. Fuck him up.”
Rob looked at Shepherd, then me. “You’re having a warm one.”
“I’m not. Beat the fuck out of him.”
Shepherd sighed. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Trevor.”
“Rob.”
Rob shook his head. “I never signed up for that, like. You just telt us to look hard.”
“The fuck is the matter with you?”
“Trevor, I don’t want to have to call the police.”
“You can get fucked.”
“But I will if you continue in this manner.”
I turned and hit Shepherd, windmilled one fist into his bony face. Something crunched under my knuckles and he dropped out of view. I looked down to see him stagger backwards like some long-legged spider, falling backwards against the two-bar. There was a hiss and then he fell forward onto the carpet. I stepped forward, planted a trainer in the old man’s ribs. Once, twice, then so many times I lost count, time solidifying around me, cocooning me and Shepherd as I dug away at the fucker. There was a shout from somewhere behind me. I felt a rough hand on my arm, felt myself hauled backwards. My knee ached. I stepped back, a new limp in my kicking leg. Rob was between us now, a wall of useless muscle. I heard Shepherd breathing; it was a rasping sound. There was blood on my shoe. It looked black in the light. I wasn’t sure where it had come from until I saw Shepherd’s mouth - it was slick with blood, toothless and strung with red spittle. He spat and dribbled onto the carpet. Rob glanced at me and then pulled out a cheap little mobile. He called an ambulance.
I went to the kitchen, wet some kitchen towels, and cleaned my trainers. When I came back through, Rob had managed to get Shepherd upright. The old man’s eyes were glazed. He was barely conscious, but he’d live. I pointed at him. “Next time I’ll fucking kill you, do you understand?”
He nodded. And that was good enough for me.
I left Rob to play nurse, jogged down the stairs and pushed out of the building. I went for a walk, breathing cold air and smiling the whole time.
I’d figured it out, you see.
All great art was about resolution, all great art was about the appoggiatura, about resolving that longing for better days. Appoggiatura, dissonance and longing, was life in a nutshell. Tension came from nature, from humankind, and when you resolved that tension in an unconventional, unexpected manner, then you created great art from your life. I had done that tonight. Shepherd had expected me to throw a tantrum. He hadn’t expected me to kick his teeth out. To be honest, I hadn’t expected to do it myself. What the hell, call it divine inspiration. An artist grew in the most unpredictable ways, and I knew this would inform my singing.
Mother worried when Shepherd didn’t return her calls. She wondered if it was something she’d done. I told her men like that - like Father, remember? - never stayed around. They were drifters by nature. I told her it didn’t matter anyway, did it? She had me, after all. And she said, somewhat sadly, that yes, she did have me. And later that night, when she came along to one of my comps, I sang John Lennon’s “Mother” just for her. When I hit the chorus, I looked out at the crowd, saw her way at the back with an untouched glass of lager shandy, and she was crying.
Good, I thought. It meant I was doing something right.
TRAIN: A Denny the Dent Story
Thomas Pluck
Sandy and I start comparing scars after I finish my second plate at her chicken shack. We both have lots of them. Hers are mostly from kitchen knives and burns from cooking. I got more. I been shot, and broke the neck of the man who did it. We show them off and wince to each other. We know that the worst kind, they don’t show at all.
I’m holding her hand and tracing a jagged scar in the meat of her palm, when her eyes go cold. Sandy’s usually got a smile. When she don’t, there’s trouble. You cause Sandy trouble, and you deal with all six-five and 350 pounds of me.
I spin on my stool and set one of my beef ribs on the floor for Remy to gnaw on. She’s a little brown and white pit bull. She tugs it from me, and I wipe my fingers clean on my overalls.
“What’s wrong,” I ask.
Sandy stares out the window into the parking lot.
“Just seeing a face that I don’t want to see.”
I roll my neck, and get ready to lay down some hurt.
A woman half Sandy’s size comes through the swinging door. The kind of girl Sandy teases me for looking at. “You’d break a girl like that, Denny,” Sandy would say. “Snap her like a wishbone.” She likes making my ears burn.
They’re burning now, too. This girl don’t wear much. A cold summer day, no sun in sight, and she’s squeezed into jeans torn off so high the pockets show. Her chest ain’t so big, but she sets it on the counter, propping herself up with her elbows.
“Hey, Sandy,” the woman says. “I know you seen me. That’s why you got your back turned.”
Sandy sighs and cleans the grill, scrapes the stone on steel.
I spin back to my plate. I ain’t scared of no man, but women like this one make my stomach feel funny.
“What you turning around for? Look. I know you want to.”
I hunker down and shrink into myself.
“Sandy, you got nothing to say to your old friend Tanya?”
“No, I don’t.” Sandy’s big shoulders tense.
“Real sad when people forget their old friends.”
The girl turns to me, and lifts up her shades. Her eyes are a lot older than her body.
Remy scampers up and licks her ankles, and Tanya bends down to scratch her with her long nails. Her chest almost spills out. I turn away.
“I said it’s sad, ain’t it, Denny?”
She stands up, and I see the puckered scar coming out her belly button, like a white centipede. I never knew her name. But I remember when I gave her that scar.
“Now I got a scar,” She says, running a finger down her belly. ”Just like that dent in your big ol’ head.”
I keep it hidden under a do-rag. But she knew it was there. I’ve had it since the doctor pulled me out. Momma said it’s ‘cause a sweet peach bruises easy.
I ain’t been sweet for a long time.
“How you know Denny?” Sandy says, and slaps the grill stone down. She snaps up her favorite slicer, a knife sharpened finger thin, and taps the blade against her thigh.
“Oh, we go way back,” Tanya says. “Denny never told you about me? Boy never forgets his first.” Tanya rubs the back of my head, and I tense up as she fingers my scar. “Sees her face on ev
ery woman after. Especially when she’s big and nasty like you!”
Sandy’s hand comes up and I grab her wrist hard, but the knife’s not in it anymore. She glares at me, and I let go.
I point Tanya to the door. “Go on,” I say. “Get out of here.”
“You can’t touch me,” Tanya says with a wiggle. “You’ll never let go of this again.” She blows a kiss on her way out the door. Her lips pinch up like two red orange slices.
“Dirty, nasty ho,” Sandy snarls, and the bowl of rib bones hits the wall where Tanya’s head had been. She attacks the grill with the stone, long shrieks as it grinds against metal.
I clean up the bones. Remy licks sauce off the floor.
“Leave it,” Sandy says.
I dump the bones in the trash.
“I’m closing early tonight.” She won’t look my way.
“She’s lying,” I say.
“Just go home, Denny.”
“Can I get a plate for Ike?”
She bites her lip, slaps together a to-go container of chicken and greens, and pushes it into my hand.
• • • •
My old green Ford squeaks around the park. Tanya was right. I never forgot her face, but we never fooled around. She was the only girl in school who never made fun of me.
I find Ike sipping his wine under the cherry trees, and I park on the grass. Remy hops out, teasing Ike with the bone in her mouth, daring him to take it.
“What you got there, pretty girl?” Ike tugs it and she growls and runs behind the bench to gnaw her prize in peace. Ike is old, all gray and lean, and sometimes he talks to folks who been dead since before I was born. He squints as I walk toward him.
“Jack Johnson,” he says. “Saw you fight Two Ton Tony in a basement fight.”
“I’m Denny.” I give Ike his plate. “This is from Sandy.”
“Oh,” Ike says. “Thank you, Big Man. That Sandy’s a good woman,” he laughs. “Makes me eat my greens.”
I sit, and he eats. Boys skateboard around the lake. Men fish. Cars follow the curves.
“How come you live at the junkyard,” Ike says, “And not with this fine girl?”
“You told me not to mess where I eat.”
He swallows, and says, “Then don’t make a mess.”
“Too late. I messed up again.” I tell him about the fight Sandy had with Tanya.
“How do you know this other girl? You never talked about no woman.”
I stare out at the lake. I want to jump in it, let my work boots get caught in the mud, so I drown. The words come out like I’m forcing myself to be sick.
“I done her wrong,” I say, and tell him.
• • • •
My Momma had a boyfriend named Horace, who tried to ho her out like Tanya. She died getting us away from him. So when I see a girl people call ‘ho,’ I know somewhere, there’s an excuse of a man behind her.
A man whose neck I want my hands around.
When Momma burned up in the fire, they bounced me around foster homes. One was a strict religious family. They never hit me, and they fed me good as long as I read their Bible. They had three foster sons, and one real one.
The real one’s name was David, but the boys all called him Train.
I didn’t know what his name meant back then.
Know those boys who smile at a girl, and it’s like she known him all her life? I never been that kind of boy, but Train was.
“Denny, no girl’s ever gonna love you,” Train said, and laughed. “But I’ll hook you up. Then you’ll talk our ears off.”
The boys laughed and crowded around us in the schoolyard.
“Girl ain’t never gonna go with Denny,” Ellis said. He was tall, fast and mean. “One look at that dent and they’ll run!”
“You got a dent in your thing too, Denny?”
“Show us, man. Give you a quarter.”
Train put an arm around me, and waved them away. “I bet you I can get Denny with a girl,” he said. “Put the money down.” Train scanned the girls leaning on the wall of the middle school. “You see that girl by herself, Denny? You want to be with her?”
My ears burned. I didn’t know her name. She was pretty and quiet. She’d even smiled at me once, but I never had the nerve to say anything.
“Yeah,” I said.
I don’t know why I didn’t go talk to her. Afraid, I guess. I was six foot tall already. Coach said I could be fullback, if I didn’t have my dent. But I was afraid of a shy sweet girl. The only girl who didn’t point and laugh.
Guess I was afraid she was saving it for later. When it would hurt more.
Train talked to her every day after school, until she let him walk her home through the park. He told me she wanted to kiss me, but no one could see.
We waited behind a barn with a broken down riding mower and bags of soil in it. It had a cracked window on one side, double doors on the other.
The boys pushed at my shoulders.
“You ever seen a girl with no clothes, Denny?”
“You gonna be a man after today.”
“Get us some trim,” Ellis said. “You want some trim, Denny?”
I didn’t know trim was, but I said “Yeah.”
“Damn right you do. Feels like fire in your nuts. Explodes out of you. It’s raw,” Ellis said.
“Ssh, they’re coming.”
The door creaked, and we stood on either side of the window to watch.
“Why are you closing the doors?”
“We can sit down and talk,” Train told her. “You don’t want anyone to see us and tell your folks, do you?”
“No.”
“You ever been kissed before?”
“No.”
Train kissed her and I raised my fist. “Why’s he kissing her?”
Ellis put his hand over my mouth. “Shut up, retard. She’s gonna hear.”
“Nice, ain’t it?” Train asked her, soft and sweet.
“Yes.”
The boys wrung their hands and squeezed their crotches while we watched. Train slid his slender hands down from her shoulders.
“I’m not that kind of girl, David!”
”Now,” Ellis said, and banged on the doors. The other boys joined in, so I did too.
“Gotta get me some of that!” Ellis shouted.
She screamed, and held Train’s arm.
Train peeked out the door.
“Tell your girl she gonna give it up, or we gonna kill both of you!” Ellis hollered, while Train smiled.
He ran back to her. “It’s Big Ellis and Denny! They’re gonna beat us both real bad, unless they can be with you.”
“Gonna bash your face so hard no girl will ever go with you again, pretty boy!” Ellis shouted. The other boys laughed through their hands.
“Please, Tanya,” Train pleaded. “Don’t let them hurt me.”
The boys pushed me inside, crowded behind me, and shut the doors.
“Get her clothes off,” Ellis hollered, and punched the wall so hard it shuddered.
They tore Tanya’s clothes and she screamed. Ellis and his little brother each took a leg, while Train stroked her hair and said, “Bitch, you make too much noise and I’ll stick it in your mouth while he’s doing you.”
I’d never seen a girl naked before. Tanya was beautiful, soft, and clean. I stared at her and felt the fire Ellis told me about.
“C’mon Denny,” Ellis said. “Nail her!”
“Train, you gonna have to show this retard how to do it. He don’t even got a hard-on.”
Tanya looked up from the floor all scared, like a flower the boys had stomped on just for being there. Like my momma.
The fire down below went cold, and shot to my fists.
I hit Ellis first. Plowed him into the bags of fertilizer, grabbed his ears and mashed his head into the dirt. His little brother jumped on my back and clawed for my eyes.
I howled and slammed him back into a wall full of tools. He screamed and dropped with a rake stu
ck in his shoulders. Ellis charged and I heaved a bag of fertilizer at him. He ducked it, and the bag crashed out the window.
He and the other boys dog piled me, bouncing fists off me everyplace. Tanya grabbed her clothes and tried to run, but Train held her arm and slapped her.
Pain don’t hurt me much. I go someplace else. It’s where momma is, and she holds me until the pain ain’t there no more. The fire takes her away, and everything goes red.
I shucked Ellis off of me and charged at Train. I grabbed him by his fancy shirt and smashed his face through the window. Dragged it back and forth across the jagged spikes until he got all blood-slippery and scrambled away howling.
Ellis got sick in the dirt, and Tanya screamed.
I picked Tanya up, and she thrashed in my arms. I tried to ease her out the window, and cut her belly on the glass as she kicked away and tumbled over on her bare behind.
Ellis tugged the rake in his brother’s back, and his brother squealed.
I yanked a pitchfork off the wall and held it over my head.
“You’re crazy!” Ellis said.
I cracked him in the mouth with the handle, and aimed the points at his belly. “Any of you do a girl like that again, I’ll give you a face just like Train’s.”
They ran, and dragged Train stumbling behind them.
I hurled the pitchfork after them. Then I took Tanya’s clothes out to where she was huddled behind a tree crying.
She took her dress and scuttled away. She bit her lip and stared at the rips and the blood.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What am I gonna tell my momma?” Tanya said, and wailed into the wads of her dress.
• • • •
Ike thinks a while, and chews the bones clean.
“Things you do as a young man follow you your whole life,” he says. “Some things can’t be made right. You got to live with what you done. You done plenty of good, too. Like that girl you pulled out of the lake, here.”
During one of my morning runs, some bangers tried to dump a woman in the water. I took her out, and put them in.
“Just keep doing good, Denny. That’s all a man can do.”
“What about Sandy?”
“You wrong a woman, you got to let her heal on her own time,” he says, scratching his white beard. “But you’re a fool if she don’t see you trying.”
