I sit on the ledge of the well. I lean back and peer down into it, smelling the scent of the cool, earthy water rising from it.
Gus places Jolly on my lap and I feel like a demented Santa Claus who throws children into wells.
“Wait,” I say, reaching into my pants and extracting my phone. I hand it to Gus.
“Good luck,” he says.
I take a deep breath and lean back.
I do not fall.
I do not plunge or plummet or drop.
What I do is lose my grip on Dr. Jolly as he shifts awkwardly, sending him into the well.
There’s a loud splash and part of me hopes the chill of the water will be like a smelling salt bringing him back to consciousness.
The next thing I know I’m flying through the air, crashing to the ground and skidding along the grass.
I lie there for a moment, winded.
I try to take stock of myself.
I didn’t hit my head. It doesn’t feel like anything is broken. Other than the burns from sliding along the grass, I’m not really in a lot of pain.
I get to my feet and make my way over to Gus, who’s staring down into the well.
“Plan B,” I say.
“What’s Plan B? Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“He’ll be fine. Plan B is that you attempt to throw me into the well.”
“Okay.”
“Think about it. Clearly the magic has rubbed off on you. The world has opened up. Why wouldn’t the well?”
“I said okay. We should probably do it now. I don’t think it’s good for him to be in there too long.”
I collapse onto the grass and pretend to be dead. I think, if this worked for Gus, maybe it’s part of it.
“What are you doing?” Gus says.
“Role playing.”
He sighs and reaches down. He grabs me under the arms and lifts me up, propping me on the edge of the well and letting me go.
Again, I do not fall.
I do not plunge or plummet or drop.
Instead, I brace myself for what comes next.
This time I’m flung even farther and I’m pretty sure I break a couple of ribs on the landing.
I lie, breathing painfully and staring up at the summer clouds floating across the blue sky.
I tell myself I’m not going to cry.
I see Gus looking down at me.
“I’m a failure,” I say.
“We should probably go,” he says.
“Are we just going to leave him in there?”
“There’s nothing we can do. I tried to jump in too. Couldn’t. The only difference was that it didn’t throw me.”
I wonder if Dr. Jolly is going to die in there. I wonder if I should have Gus bludgeon me into unconsciousness. Maybe if Jolly were to rise from the well and find me in such a state, he would throw me in to resuscitate me, as he did Gus. It would be an even more accurate recreation of that night.
Gus offers a hand and helps me to my feet.
On the way to the parking lot, on the way to the truck, Gus says, “I’m sorry, man.”
27
Coyote
I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, the yard bathed in the overly bright porchlight, staring at . . . I don’t know what I’m staring at, at first. I notice the grass in the yard is really long but, beyond that, it looks like the front of the Monarch’s car is buried in the house. I never realized how small these houses are. Or maybe how big the Monarch’s car actually is.
He had told me he couldn’t drive it because the tires were all flat. Same situation as me. Looking at the tires now, they’re not all flat.
But they are all different sizes.
This, I imagine, coupled with his constant state of inebriation, is what propelled the car into my house.
“I’m real sorry,” he says.
It would startle me if I weren’t in a state of near catatonia. The last few hours have been a blur. I choked off my emotions and disappeared within myself. After we’d left work, Gus took me to Easy J’s where we ate in silence. Then he’d driven me home, me choking back tears the entire time, and driven away before either one of us had noticed the car in my house.
“It’s just stuff.” My voice sounds hollow and far away. The landlord will probably be ecstatic to hear about this. These houses are so cheap it’s probably considered totaled, or demolished, or whatever you call houses that are beyond repair.
“Well . . .” The Monarch lights a cigarette.
“Not Alice.”
I don’t see how it’s possible. She was usually in the bedroom fucking other people, well away from the destructive path of the Monarch’s car.
“She was settin on the couch, I guess.”
“Is she . . .?”
“Fraid so.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry though. I didn’t do nothin to her body.”
I take my keys from my pocket and walk toward the house, wondering if I should unlock the front door or just crawl in around the Monarch’s car.
I use the front door.
Walking in, I look to my left at the crumpled front of the Monarch’s car and the pile of house debris soaking up the blood from a body that has been removed.
Not just a body.
Alice.
I didn’t even like her very much, maybe even hated her, and had still managed to fail her completely. I couldn’t even manage to keep her alive. Couldn’t even do that one relatively simple thing.
This day suddenly seems way too long.
I wander into the bedroom and collapse onto the bed.
I haven’t been home for three days so I don’t even know if this took place today or not.
I pull the covers up around me and breathe in the scent of Alice and who knows how many guys.
I wonder if her purse full of money is still in the closet and immediately hate myself for the thought. But then I immediately tell myself I’m probably not going to go to her funeral.
Mentally exhausted, I drift off.
And wake up to a coyote crouched beside the bed.
Once I take a moment to clear the sleep from my brain, I’m a little scared, but the coyote doesn’t seem to be particularly hostile. There is no snarling or baring of teeth. He’s just sitting there panting, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like the mangy feral dog he is.
“What do you want?”
He shuffles a little closer, still resting on his haunches, licks my face, and springs to all fours. He leans his head back over his shoulder.
“You want me to get up?”
Of course he doesn’t answer me. He’s a coyote.
“Fine. I’ll get up.”
I pull myself out of the bed, try to ignore the aches and pains. It’s still dark outside. I grab my phone from the floor and bring the screen to life. It’s 5:23 a.m.
The coyote pads off into the living room.
I follow him.
He exits the house via a small gap between the window frame and the Monarch’s car.
I use the front door.
I step outside. The neighborhood seems eerily quiet and I imagine the coyote slipping into the houses and killing everyone in their sleep. Even the nearby highway sounds hushed and far away. The air is rich with honeysuckle and moisture. The trees and surrounding lawns have a velvety look from dewfall or a recent rain.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll follow you.”
The coyote walks through the overgrown lawn and pauses when he reaches the sidewalk. I catch up to him and begin walking away from the dead end in front of the house.
“I hope you’re not taking me to the Monarch’s.”
He’s not. He walks up a block and turns to his left. I continue following him.
On this street the houses are even smaller and closer together. No driveways. The street is lined on both sides with cheap cars and oversized trucks. Nearly every house has either a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, a sign for a security company, or a ‘Beware of Dog’ si
gn. Sometimes all three. What are these people trying to protect? What treasures lie in their tiny, faltering, mold-infested homes?
The coyote continues moving swiftly and confidently up the incline of the sidewalk, through the deep purple of the pre-dawn.
A few of the houses we pass have a single inside light on and I imagine some bedraggled blue collar guy sitting at a cheap kitchen table and smoking a cheap cigarette while the morning coffee brews, waiting to be put in a travel mug and used as a weak defense against the cold reality of a mild hangover and yet another day that’s probably going to be a lot like the day before. It’s a life I opted out of, if only slightly, but it seems almost romantic to me now.
I begin thinking of my early morning stroll as a guided tour of regret.
I had just accepted failure before Gus fell in the well. And then, once again, after seeing Gus’s transformation, I’d thought there was some easy solution to my problems. Some way of tricking failure and, if not finding happiness, at least lessening the degree of misery.
But that was never meant for me.
I make a pact with myself to never try again.
At this point, it’s just getting embarrassing.
Nevertheless, I continue following the coyote. I want to think he’s taking me to some secret, magical location where everything makes sense. I would probably be just as happy if he were taking me back to his pack, where they would fall upon me and devour me, consuming all shreds of my existence so I could just blink out, leaving everyone around me to wonder what had happened to me for, like, two minutes.
Instead the coyote just leads me to a payphone in front of the Kroger and I think, “This is not very magical.” I don’t say it aloud because the payphone is by a bus stop and there are already a few mean looking people huddled around it, smoking cigarettes and angrily punching things into their phones. This has to be one of the last payphones on the planet. It looks anachronistic.
The grocery store across the parking lot hasn’t opened yet, but there is already a line of people forming at the walk-up pharmacy window.
Sirens roar from the highway, startling me. The coyote belts out a howl and darts back the way we came. I imagine him living in the nature preserve behind the house, stalking the bike path and sustaining himself on the corpses of OD victims.
The payphone rings.
Of course it does.
I pick it up.
“Hello,” I say.
There is no response.
I imagine the woman on the line. Of course I know who it is. I know who I want it to be. I’ve just been deluding myself.
I think of one of the first times I was with Callie. She pointed to one of her many tattoos and said, “I got this one—” and I cut her off because I didn’t want to know. Not at the time. I wanted to make up my own story about it. I wanted it to be mysterious.
I imagine the person on the other end of the line sitting in a silenced tour bus, cutting through the still dark cornfields of Kansas.
I don’t just imagine it.
I want it.
I want it to be true so much.
I lower my head and place the phone back in its stainless steel cradle.
I should have said something.
Maybe that’s all she was waiting for. Waiting for me to say, “I miss you.”
28
The Poet
Surprisingly, Gus is at work today. Probably for the same reason I am. We both want to find out if Dr. Jolly is there or if we are murderers. Jolly hasn’t shown up by lunch and I think we probably need to explore our options. We go to Easy J’s.
“If I was resurrected from the well, there’s no way Jolly died down there,” Gus says. “It’s like his well.”
“Did you ask anybody if they’d seen him?”
“No. I thought that would sound suspicious.”
I sneeze, still recovering from the ride in with Diane Marbles, and give myself a vigorous scratchdown.
“Dude, you really need to get that looked at. You look like shit.”
“Stop telling me that. You know I don’t have the money. Especially now that I only have the one income and need to look for a place to live.”
I float this last thing out there, leaving it hanging in the air.
“Oh, c’mon, Alice didn’t pay for anything. She was more of a drain than an asset.”
I think about defending her and decide I don’t have the energy. Plus hearing her commodified like that—from Gus, of all people—hurts some infrequently thought about part of my soul.
“Still, that doesn’t change the fact that I need to find a place to live.” I put it out there again. “The landlord was coming by the house today to assess the situation. I’d be surprised if he ever lets me back in. Basically one side of the house is now a hole.”
“Didn’t you say Alice left some money behind?”
“She did, but I donated half to her funeral costs and the rest isn’t going to last very long if I have to stay at a motel.” A more veiled hint, but still putting it out there nevertheless. “Actually, her family is probably where all of it should have gone. It’s more like I turned over half for the funeral and donated the rest to myself, which is a nicer way of saying I stole it.”
Gus scoffs. “Dude, it probably didn’t come close to what you’d spent on her since she moved in.”
Our favorite waitress, Maybelline—the one with the lazy eye—stands beside the table, ready to take our order.
“One check or separate?” she asks.
“One’s fine,” Gus says.
“I never know with you two. On again, off again, huh?” she smiles.
I’m surprised she still remembers this. The first time we’d ever had her as a server, she’d put us on one check. I always just assumed this was because it was easier. Gus, however, more than a little inebriated at the time, asked if she thought we were gay and then explained the test to her. Whenever the server asked about separate checks, we assumed that meant they thought we weren’t gay. Whenever they didn’t bother to ask, we assumed they thought we were. I’m sure men and women thought the same thing about the plutonic versus romantic thing.
Gus gives her his order.
I order chicken and waffles and get really excited.
“Some places don’t even split checks,” Gus says. “They just make you do it at the table, like we’re all math wizards or something.”
Gus points at my red barnacled hand resting on the table.
“Tarot swears it’s gluten,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “That sounds pretty much imaginary. Is Tarot a doctor?”
“No, but she’s into the healthy eating, organic whole foods bullshit. She got second opinions when you were at our party. Resounding conclusion: gluten.”
“Second opinions?”
“Yeah. When you were lying out in the yard. We all examined you.”
“That’s . . . really embarrassing.”
“It was with love.”
“Speaking of which, do you think I’d be able to stay with you for a while?” The hinting hasn’t worked.
The length of his delay shocks me. But before he can answer, I get it. He’s afraid my failure will rub off. Things have been going well for Gus. Better and better, actually. And during this cushy period of his life, he’s watched me develop a rash, have a psychopath unleashed against me, have a car driven into my house, bury a girlfriend, and possibly drag him into being an accomplice to murder. This last thing makes me relax a little. If Gus is involved in any way whatsoever, there is no way Dr. Jolly is dead.
“Never mind,” I say. “I get it.”
I secretly hope Gus will say something like, “Of course you can stay with us, man. Don’t be stupid.”
But he doesn’t. He looks slightly relieved and says, “You know I’d love to have you, man. But with Fee and so many other people coming and going, we’ve got quite the houseful most nights.”
Wow. Not even the invitation for a couple of nights. I probably
shouldn’t have passed out in their backyard. That’s always poor form. I just didn’t think it would matter with Gus. And it wouldn’t have mattered with the old Gus. But this is the new Gus, the After Gus.
“You’ve got your dad’s place, right?”
Ouch. This would seem like a less bonkers suggestion if he’d never met the man.
“I’ll let Tarot put me on a strictly gluten-free diet or whatever.”
There. Who can resist the idea of practical martyrdom? I’m pledging to throw myself in their hands. Thus, if he says no, my fate ultimately rests on him.
He doesn’t take the bait. “You don’t really have to live with us for her to do that. You can probably just look on the internet.”
“I’m sure I’d find some way to fuck it up.”
Maybelline comes back with our food.
“You boys need to cheer up,” she says.
Even she notices I’ve made things awkward.
“Can I come and live with you, Maybelline? My best friend is too busy with his new friends to be accommodating.”
She laughs a little and shoos me away with a bony hand.
“You wouldn’t want that, hon. I’m livin in my car in the parkin lot.” Then she leans in closer and whispers, “I even got to wash up in the employee restroom. Truckers used to treat me real nice, but not no more. Everyone’s flat broke. Let me know if y’all need anything else.”
She turns and heads back toward the kitchen.
We eat in silence. I stare at my food before putting it into my mouth, wondering if it’s killing me. Gus types messages into his phone. I want to think he’s lobbying Tarot on my behalf but know he’s probably just sexting one of her young fair maiden friends. I imagine him roleplaying cult sex with Fee and shudder.
I find a group of people sitting a couple tables away to focus on. There’s a rough looking man and two teenage girls. It’s probably some trucker dad, in the area to take his daughters to lunch or something. Instead I imagine him as a working class poet with a name like Chuck Eldridge or something. Something masculine but still slightly distinguished sounding. He’s a small press guy, but widely respected. He lives in a tiny cinderblock house by a gravel pit overlooking Dayton. It’s slightly dangerous and a little scary, but the wildness is what makes it intoxicating. Like his writing. These girls are his acolytes, two of many who make the journey of hundreds of miles just to see how he lives and hope some of his magic poetry wears off on them. When they get up to go, I notice he can’t even straighten up all the way. I imagine this is part of it. Imagine him saying, “A poet doesn’t work, ladies. That’s why I removed several vertebrae just to go on disability. We have to make sacrifices for art.” And before the bill is even paid, they’re contemplating doing the same thing. They’ll go back to his house, get blind drunk, and take turns hitting each other in the spine with metal rods while the poet dances around a trash fire and howls at the moon.
Failure As a Way of Life Page 10