Under morning star, a man digs. Through cold loose earth his fingers plow… his fingers… knotted and swollen at the knuckles as the naked roots of tress plunge about, writhing in a slither about the top soil the further down he digs past scaly epidermis now to coarse muscle his fingers scrape through shattered nails possessed by the nocturnal rite of cold cricket call, piercing yellow gaze of great horned owl and howling beasts of high alpine alike: they urge him on. His flesh splits into the earth, blood pooling with the moisture of deeper soil, ripping through root and vein, charging through the last layers of loose flesh to rock, to bone, scraping knuckles against a lithosphere forged by molten ooze—by molten ooze, by the blood of man: theses harsh sounds are merging, swallowed in the chorus of abject night.
. . .
The way time is moving, it will take all goddamn day for Jud and Uncle Bob to reach camp on Redneck Mountain—that’s in the tedious way time passes through Bob’s beat-to-hell 89’ Bronco, past its fresh coat of confederate red and over the confederate flag decals plastered across the back window: cheap cosmetics that do nothing to conceal the countless dents from collisions with objects that Jud’s uncle could only partly recall… See that there, that bend in the hood? Hit a steer square in the ass when I ran off 78 into Jerry’s pasture a few Christmases back…That crack in the windshield? That was me, my thick head, it just about bust through and took the rest of me with it. Yessir, if it wasn’t for the ol’ gal face down in my lap I probably would have too. A human seatbelt, hah, ain’t that somethin’… But for all Bob's proud tales of the ’89 Bronco there were untold truths of accidents forgotten, their shameful memories drowned in a raging stream of liquor and beer and, sometimes, wine, and it didn’t take but one good look at good old Uncle Bob to see that he was a man with secrets so dark squirreled away that no statute of limitations and no amount of liquor and drugs could ever relieve his conscious of their burden.
Crawling up the serpentine bends of Highway 231, the proud confederate tank sputters and coughs along at a steady 30 mph. Somehow Uncle Bob could always come up with the cash—or ice if he was going to Demetri’s shop—for new rims or a spoiler or a police scanner—which Jud found hilarious given that the old piece of shit topped-out around 60mph—but he never had the sense to put in for a new transmission, so any time Bob shifts down or up against the road’s grade there is a violent heave, followed by a brief sputtering pause before the gear grinds into place, a grinding felt in the harsh vibrations of the cracked leather seats, pocked by cigarette burns, by any soul brave or foolish enough to step foot into this catastrophe wagon.
Under the stench of cheap, chemical-soaked tobacco there persisted a faint palette of putrid smells that seemed, to Jud, to shift sporadically and in harmony with Uncle Bob’s erratic mood swings. These underlying scents were never pleasant or inviting in any way, but neither were they unbearably repulsive. There was something cautionary in them as if, in stepping foot inside the vehicle, you had wandered into a shallow cave carved into the side of a mountain to avoid a passing storm, and your nose, unfamiliar with the smells of such a place, sniffs on to something amiss, beyond the dankness of empty caves somehow, suddenly, instinctually familiar to your snout to the pungent odor of rotting animal carcass and warm, predatorial breath exhaled from the void of darkness behind you. Jud’s well-trained nose could interpret Bob’s mood—on some occasions sooner than others—present in the fleeting aromas of the Bronco’s interior, but if a stranger were to climb in the cab on a day when a faint trace of Ciara 80 for Women by Revlon was detectable, and if this stranger were to rag on Bob, even in the slightest and most harmless of ways, not realizing that the whiff of perfume was a trademark of his ex, Cindy—with whom Bob had tried and failed and tried again to rekindle a passionate relationship ever since it ended in their early twenties, or 35 years ago—then this misstep would be comparable to crawling further into the darkness of the den of a slumbering beast and away from a storm soon to part—or, perhaps more accurately, like trying to chase away a meth kick (that could be safely slept-off at home) by climbing inside a dark, musty ’89 Bronco with a dead-eyed, heartbroke lunatic at the helm who is promising you $20 a gram from his cousins’ trailer tucked away in a holler under the day-long shade of Redneck Mountain, or the place off hwy 231 your Pappy disappeared into when you were eight years old.
Jud uses a pocket-knife to scrape tiny clods of earth and engine grime out from under his fingernails, pretending not to notice Uncle Bob relieving himself—for a total number of times on this trip now impossible to remember--off the side of a public, scenic overlook into the murky amber gloaming. The Bronco’s idling engine bucks, forcing the tip of the pocketknife into the tender seam of flesh joining Jud’s nail to its finger. A rage—catalyzed in Jud by each and every insufferable mile up the mountain—culminates in the throbbing pain as sounds from the falling night lose their distinction to a shrill ring emanating from the shallow pocket of soft flesh in his neck just beneath the skull and rippling throughout his nervous system. No case of Bud Light and no blunt of the finest Kush around can lighten the load of a fool aware of his own foolishness: of these truths, Jud is empirically certain. But this…this sensation of pain prompts a euphoria of perfect oblivion. It starts at the corners of his memories—in the crevices of his construct of identity—and folds in on itself to his conscious awareness of the present. Distant creak of trees, dashes of yellow line drawing the curvature up hwy 231, discarded McDonald’s wrappers skittering across the pullout like tumbleweeds—all of his recognizable environment sheds its flesh of automatic meaning and shakes loose from the interwoven forms that have, until now, shaped Jud’s understanding of reality. He looks into the rearview mirror and wild yellow daffodil eyes carved out at the pistil by solid black pupils stare back at him. Uncle Bob’s piss arc turns into Uncle Bob turns into a rainbow pissing into the sky of swirls the color of all things into luminous grey—sun crashing, exploding into horizon behind a miserable atmosphere. He stabs the blunted tip of the blade deeper under his nail—murdering the violent curvature of his life led astray in the rearview, ahead of his intentions and into the hands of a madman—prying the corners of his fingernail apart from the flesh of finger…37 times: in the past year Jud rode beside Uncle Bob to camp on Redneck Mountain 37 times…a nice, sweet girl; it doesn’t matter what color her hair is or what color her skin is; how poor she is or how rich she is…so long as the she doesn’t smother him in bed and so long as she gives a damn about people—not just him, but all people—then Jud could wake up and slide his boots on in the morning without feeding himself a new lie like a new sun, like the days were all born again through immaculate celestial conception, through spontaneous appearance of star bodies; through a second shot at decency through the erasure of yesterday. She don’t even haveta want kids…not right away…not ever. She can like football…she can hate…the door to the glovebox falls open on his knees revealing a .357 revolver and a handful of loose bullets. With crazed, unblinking eyes lost somewhere out in the swirl of things, Jud empties the cylinder, reinserts a single bullet, gives it a twirl and flicks it closed. The color of ugly sky consumes it all in an ugly wash…
“Woah! What are you—,” a familiar noise, the sound from the mouth of a person echoes across the void. “…now just hold on a minute partner…,” the sound from the mouth…the voice belonging to Bob now filling the space, returning it to meaning…returning meaning to it. “You just set that down nice and easy and we’ll talk this thing out…hey! (sound of fingers snapping) I’ll even get you a sixer of that fancy beer you like at the Depot. Now howbout that? Whatcha say buddy?”
“Deee-poh?” Jud manages the sound behind the word but he cannot seem to conger up an image of a thing, or time, or place to attribute it to. However, what does become overwhelmingly apparent all the sudden is the feeling of the barrel of the .357 pressed hard under his chin. Like a child who suddenly realizes that the strange stick he lifted off the forest floor is no longer an imaginary sword with witch to assail villainous tree trunks, but rather a writhing Copperhead now good and pissed off, Jud drops the gun in his lap.
“Hey now,” hollers Uncle Bob, reaching in through the window and snatching up the pistol before it bounces on to the floorboard. “Shit boy you just go dropping a loaded gun like that…you wanna get yer head blowed off?”
Jud averts the daggers flying at him from Bob’s eyes and feels the wet stain of blood fusing with the permanence of motor oil and mud on the leg of his Levis.
“What the hell is that,” Bob’s eyes trace the blood stain back to his finger. “The fuck has gotten into—” sniff-sniff…sniiffff…Bob shoves his snout inside the Bronco and breathes it in. “awww hell…you got that carbon monoxide poisonin’. Happened to Cindy one time. When I found her she was…well she was actin’ crazy. I don’t know what’s leakin’ but first thing I do when we get back is bring it to Demitri. That’s some scary shit man, you coulda…” Bob doesn’t finish his sentence and the three unopened Natty’s remain untouched as night descends on the Bronco approaching camp at Redneck Mountain. It’s a rare silence for Jud who’s used to Uncle Bob’s beer-soaked rants in contest with the decibels of one of three cassette tapes: ZZ Top’s “XXX”, Lynryrd Skynyrd’s “Street Survivors” and a recording of a speech from the late Robert Byrd, former Democratic president pro tem of the U.S. senate and former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. But this silence is penetrated by the night’s sounds of a season in decay. The cold insect call, the tiny crunching of a rodent’s paw against a thickening layer of fallen leaf—Jud longs for the awareness of his Existence in all things, he yearns to hear the song of his life played back at him through the eyes of another. They pass under the front gate without leaving five bucks in the “honor box” and double-park in front of the Depot. Jud steps out of the Bronco and waits for Bob to fork over the cash for his “snooty” sixer. Bob rifles through his pockets, hands shifting over the $10’s, $20’s and $100’s, and comes out emptyhanded with an emptier look on his face.
Kommentare