I clean Grandpa before I clean the rooms. This makes it easier—to get it out of the way. Maybe it means I hate him, or I’m just chicken shit. Either way it has to be done quick, like setting a joint in one pull. Saw that once back in high school at a match where a kid pulled a switch on a guy and the guy wouldn’t let go. Kid pulled and levered, arched up and started bouncing until it went—a great suck unsticking arm from shoulder right before the whistle. Everybody heard it. The cheerleaders shut up. We watched the coach pat the guy’s back and whisper until he sat up, green and shivering. Coach made him put his arm in the shape of an “L” and then, without notice, slapped both elbows together—another great gulp, then the darkness took the shoulder back. Kid ended up finishing the match. Lost by two points.
I could never do that; can’t stand the pain. But I think about it a lot. That’s why I clean Grandpa quick and follow the system. Get in, roll him on his side, plastic, diaper, wipe, tuck in the new sheet, roll him over, tuck it, and done. If his eyes are open I turn on the T.V.. Mamma won’t do it. She can’t even look at him, not since half his face went mushy and he forgot how to use the toilet. But she gets on me if he gets a bed sore. She’s one to talk since she ain’t willing to help. He’s her actual Dad. Bounced her on his knee. But he bounced me too and it’s hard for me to work a tube up his pecker.
Once he’s squared away it’s not so bad. Then it’s just the rest of the rooms, seven of them. And they got a system too. First, I got to pick up the floors. Most of the time it’s trash and old socks. Other times you get lucky; find half a dime bag or some crystal. Last week, these hippie kids came through and left a whole Altoid tin full of tabs of acid, still minty from the dust. Took two and got fucked for a day, around the clock. When it was time to clean Grandpa I thought I was peeling a giant banana in bed. Pulled his skin all the way down. Pushed my fingers deep into his yellow flesh. The rest of the day was fire and ice, and I tasted colors, and danced upside down for a few more hours. But when I came to, I was scared. Wasn’t sure what I done. Thought I might’ve killed him. I waited outside his door for a while until I got the nerve to go in. Wasn’t so bad. Just a mess. Cream of peas spread out all over the T.V.
After I pick up the floors, then I vacuum, wipe down everything—if it needs it—clean the toilet—if it needs it —the sink. One thing I always do is leave an Andez mint on the pillow, shiny and square. That part was my idea, not anybody else’s. It was Grandpa who built the spread though back before Warehouser came and leased out the lumber tracks. He knew the semis were coming and would need gas. So he dug out the tanks himself. Couple years later he built the country store. Then he saved enough for the motel. He built it all next to a canal that was there long before him. Used to tell me it was built by the Chinese, the first growth lumberjacks that took trees the width of cars with hand saws and wedges and hammers. He said they dug it to move a stream that was in the way of their mules. Now Warehouser uses it for runoff, swirls of our diesel running tie-dye at the back of the store.
Depending on the harvest cycle we could live in a forest or live in a field. First time the woods left, I was four. Couple guys showed up on the service road with a boom truck and an articulating saw. You could tell, they didn’t know where to start so they started where they stopped. Reached the saw into the woods like an arm, shaking the trees, busting them. I stood up from my toys and got scared. Then the scream. Like the woods was a skin they broke open—made me run and hide. Tied my coat round my ears and crawled into Grandpa’s old Peterbilt, rusting behind the fence.
When it got dark the screaming stopped. So I untied the coat from my head and got out of the truck. I saw Mom across the lot. She was crying, crawling out the canal, dress soaked in the brown water, iridescent in the gloaming. When she saw me she stopped and yelled, tripping, running until she caught me; held me against the gravel and cried; slapped me, couldn’t get the words out until she finally asked where I’d been. I was too scared of her to answer. She smelled of diesel and her hair was in my mouth. After a while we got up. She carried me inside and washed me. We ended up in her bed, eating ice cream in front of the T.V.
That acid I found was lucky. Give me something to do. I been making myself scarce from the old crowd, those that buy and sell drugs. Probation is a terrifying fact. That thing with that lady… I don’t care to mention. Point is that now, I can get straight on my own, and so help Mom, and try with all my might from doing the things I always do.
The acid makes it easier to clean Grandpa. Softens the blow so it’s even nice in its way. Last week, I was in there with him, rolling on the tabs. We was contemplating the trees. They’re back again, pre-pubescent cedar spreading their tendrils up against the motel window. And there Grandpa was, spread out before me, like a lady, gaunt and wide hipped, if it weren’t for his beard and sunken chest. He blinked at the wall with his blue eyes—same as mine—and I cleaned him, ran my hands over his body, his liver spots and wrinkles, the bump and run of blue veins I could trace from his broken knuckles to his heart. A sound. We looked. At the window, peering through the needles and cones, was the face of Jesus, unmistakable, his broad face, those eyes, bleeding from his head for the thorns. I looked down at Grandpa and he was looking at Jesus and they shared the same face: pale, like they’d been through it, bloodshot eyes. Mostly sad. Sad and tired and ready to lay down and die. We looked at him, and he looked at us before he let the boughs fall, and drifted away, moving on down the dark service road. I took Grandpa by the shoulder and he took my hand with his gnarled claw and we cried together. I don’t give a shit. Everybody knows. Kidnapping. Rape. I knifed a police dog. Didn’t get caught for a lot more and a lot worse.
Here I am making it sound like I never leave the place. Though this is mostly true. Sure it’s hard to face the world, and when I do I don’t say much. But seeing other faces is important, proof that you have something in common with other people. Plus, I been finding my guns around the place, loaded, unloaded. Not sure why. Yesterday my Glock was in the breadbox.
Today for instance: I got a text from Steve—who I like. Didn’t use to run with him much. Not because I didn’t want to. Who wouldn’t want to? It’s just I didn’t know he existed. Though he was always there. Just in the background someplace. That’s the way he likes it. So we suit each other. It’s the closest thing to friendship loneliness can afford.
I got Steve’s text when I was in with Grandpa. We was talking about our thoughts which we have come to do. I held him. The tabs of acid made him small in my arms, like the baby we all used to be. He was asking me how the time went so slow if the days all blurred together, that if after death meant no days to count by, he wanted out of the whole Goddamn thing. I sympathized. Told him I didn’t know either. I don’t know what to say at times like that. And I felt guilty—for all of it—and my trip started to pull to the dark place. Which is why I was thankful for Steve’s text about a party. Got me away from Grandpa looking for answers I don’t have.
I took Mom’s Celica and some beers for the road. Drank most of them on the way. Dropped another tab. Steve sent specific directions and a warning not to trust the GPS. These are the things Steve is careful of: directions, ingredients, weights, measures. His hands are good to be in, I think, as the sky purples the bald-headed mountains. When I get there, the party is in a field. Darkness falls. There is a ring of trucks with a fire in the middle of them. There’s an old house off a ways, tumored with plumes of blackberry bush, pushing up under the porch. I park on a hill looking down on it all and text Steve. I watch as people peel stuff off the house to feed the fire.
Five, six cigarettes later and all out of beer. That motherfucker still hasn’t texted me back. Would have gone but now these kids are parked behind me, blocking the way. I think that this is not like Steve but a couple of minutes pass and I start to think, yeah, maybe it is. Wasn’t he with Dave when the cops raided his trailer and found that ATM they’d ripped out of the 7-11? Didn’t Steve go free? And what about when Rod gave him cash for pills and he was mysteriously mugged? Come to think of it, I remember that Steve is a Rat. I text him three question marks.
Damn kids are loud, high beams in my rearview. They keep coming, parking back behind, filing down the hill, crowds of children walking past. Bang! A big one hit the roof of my car.
Hey! I yell and move to get out.
And then another one, bigger than the first, walks over the top of me. Foot to bumper and roof and hood and keeps on walking down the hill. I get out.
I see you! I say.
All they do is laugh, and keep walking.
Hey! I yell again.
I look at the car. All fucked up. Mom’s car! And I recall all the shit I take and then I think of Steve, and know for certain he’s a rat. And I curse him and feel the cold justice of teaching these fucking kids a lesson they will never forget. So I get my knife. I love my knife, a real stiletto. It cost me a little bit but I love the way it clicks, the way it moves through the night air. I catch up with the kids and grab the biggest one by the shoulder.
Hey little fucker, I say.
And then I see it, the part I love: when they go from tough guy to scared guy.
What do you think of this? I say.
And I feel the push of it, when the friends see it and scatter and it’s just me and him, left to deal with a mean dude like me.
No! he screams. Dude!
Yeah, I say. Yeah? Where’s your manners?
Please! Oh, please no!
I push the blade against his throat.
What is this? He says.
What is this? I say. Are you kidding? And I let a little blood run. Nice try. How many cars you fuck up today?
He is shivering in his letterman jacket. No! It wasn’t me!
Get on your knees, I say. I have something for you.
And he drops to his knees! And I begin to feel great. Great about everything. Until, it’s funny, I wonder: was the kid who stomped Mom’s car wearing a letterman’s jacket? I look into the watery eyes of the kid whose life I hold in my hand—in my hand—and I think that maybe…even as I needle his neck.
But then, nothing. Just the red flash and stars, what I’ve come to know as a bludgeoning. I wake with grass and dirt in my teeth. It’s bright. I feel my head. It hurts. One of the kid’s teammates I think. Fuck. The night is obsidian and my trip goes bad. I look out. The ring of trucks is satanic and twisting, the folks down there: demons, the house: an old naked man whose skin they’re peeling off. An electric shock of fear and I stumble to my knees and brace for another blow, but nothing. Just the headlights, but no one. It’s quiet. Like everybody just walked right past me.
Ben Porter is a short fiction writer who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana where he is a PhD student in English under the University Doctoral Fellowship. He is a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing where he was the recipient of the Pearl Scholarship. Recently, he can be read in the Madison Review, Sandy River Review, Bull, and Renascence Journal. When not writing, Ben wrestles with his kids, drinks wine, and tries with all his might to play country licks on his guitar.