Water, Women and Wine
“Billy…did you finish your homework yet?” I heard mom calling from inside the charred stink of the kitchen. The whole house still reeked from whatever she tried to cook for dinner and I was sitting on the couch, eating my P&J sandwich trying to watch the last few minutes of the Facts of Life. Trudy was whining again about how hard it is being a fat girl, mom had been crying, again, and I just wanted to be left in peace.
I continued staring at the television screen, trying to catch what Tootie was explaining through tear filled eyes to a patiently listening Mrs. Garrett, and after glancing only briefly at my unopened book bag said, “yeah.”
“It’s late, please go down and get your father.” She pleaded and I thought, for fucks sake, I’ve had a bad day; a really, really bad day and now, for shit’s and giggles, I have to trudge down there and pull him out of the damn pub. This is my life, I thought. Living in this stinking little island turd of a town, wondering who would have the pleasure of kicking my ass at school tomorrow, eating peanut butter and jelly on half stale bread while my mother torches dinner after dinner and the fucking frosting; the god damn cherry on top is prying my drunk ass old man from the third leg of his bar throne five nights a week.
I stood up, walked over to the television that had been discontinued after Nixon resigned and shut it off. Walking through the land mines of second hand toys my little brother Auggie was still too young to know were defective I wondered if in another life, I had killed a king or pillaged a village or something, something unforgivable, to deserve the abyss of crap I wallowed in now. I opened the door to the paint cracking, roof leaking, dilapidated beach bungalow my parents struggled daily to keep from the relentlessly reaching hands of the bank and said back over my shoulder without thinking, “Yeah Ma, I’ll go get pop; I’ll be quick about it to, I know Norman Rockwell’s coming over any minute for the family portrait.”
The door shut behind me and I stood out on the porch, the sticky Florida evening all round me and I suddenly felt smaller than the damn Cicadas chirping away in the humid gloaming. Fucks sake, I thought-why do I do that shit? My father does that shit- and I ain’t him. I should have gone back in. I should have; but I didn’t. I turned around and saw her standing in that smoke filled kitchen and you know what she was doing? She was scraping out that roasting pan. She was scraping away at the charred remains of whatever hell had been in there; chicken or tuna casserole or god knows what just so she could most likely as not, burn up something as bad or worse tomorrow. She wasn’t crying either. Ma usually only cries when she has to start thinking of things as they are but when she’s busy burning food and then cleaning it up she doesn’t have to think about any of that. Maybe that’s why she burns stuff. So she can stand there cleaning up the wreckage of it just to take her mind off the ruins of her own life.
And then I saw she had Auggie up in his little kid seat. All strapped in like a baby astronaut and he was eating something. I hope it wasn’t anything out of that pot but he was eating something and my mom was talking to him. Course he wasn’t talking back, being a year and some change old and all but she was kinda just talking things to him like he could answer, like he understood or something. Who knows what she was saying because even poor folks like us have A/C in Florida so the windows were closed. Maybe she was telling him what a good little baby boy he was- maybe she was telling him who things were all right, or that good things happen, eventually to good people- maybe she was telling him what an asshole he had for a big brother.
Maybe she was saying out loud or thinking inside what my pop always said,
“Two assholes don’t make a right, just make more shit.” Yeah, I know. He’s the family philosopher.
I just couldn’t go back in after that and so I took my butt down the gravely, littered road that led out from our stretch of town. The “Redneck Riviera” was what most of those that didn’t actually live in it called it, hell; most of the folks that lived in it called it that. Said it with some kinda warped sense of pride, like a hallucination almost; that maybe sticking a elegant word to it made the rusted hunks of cars on blocks in their yards a gurgling fountain, or statue of David, instead of a useless piece of shit. They could sit around in their wife beaters drinking and look upon their battered up old skiffs half waiting on engines or parts of engines and the other half waiting on a storm sinking for the insurance claim as if they was fine gondolas and they were just passing the day, drinking wine, and waiting for their gondolier to show up.
Shit man, the “Redneck Riviera” I thought to myself as I slowly made my way down to the marina where pop would be holding court amongst his legions of devoted disciples, passing flocks of plastic pink flamingos and confederate flag flapping flagpoles… yeah, it was kinda funny.
I sure wasn’t in any kind of rush to get down to the bar, I mean it was going to be a task either way peeling pop off that stool and usually he was just a little less stuck to it the more he got in him so time wasn’t really of the essence. Besides, it was still early enough where some of the kids from school might be out and around; I was absolutely in no rush to be running into any of them so I scooped one of the beers I had grabbed from the fridge earlier out of my “European” camouflage, deep pocketed shorts and made my way down to Wally’s pond. One good thing about having a drunk for a pop is this; they can’t count so good. Hell I could’ve taken a twelve pack and he’d just assume he drank them all. It wasn’t so much cold anymore since I had started to get the feeling I might be put on guide duty earlier and had been lugging them around for a few hours; but it was cold enough, and it was good.
Wally’s pond was something of an institution round the ole Riviera; Wally was a gator, damn big son of a bitch too; and his pond was a swampy bit of nothing, but it was his home. I’d come down here every now and then; I’d steal some chicken or fish out of the house before ma could scorch it all up and feed it to old Wally. Tonight though I just felt like going down there to say hello and he was there all right, I stood there on the moonlit bank and he came up from the gloom twenty yards away or so, his little lizard eyes staring at me from just above the surface of the water. We just kinda looked at each other for a bit and I started wondering what it was like for him. He was all alone. No other gators in that pond to keep him company, none anyone’s ever seen before anyway, he must get lonely, just swimming around, looking for food or waiting for hand outs and basking in the hot sun all by himself. I was starting to feel bad for him and then the water gurgled some and in a ripple of water he was gone.
I started making my way down to the marina after that; it’d most likely been long enough for pop to expound on whatever he needed to that evening and getting him up and home shouldn’t be much trouble. Not any more trouble than usual in any event. I was still thinking about Wally, and about my mom and dad, and about me when I turned the corner from Cypress onto main where the marina was when I ran smack into the balls of it. Marty Childress, Alias Turner and about 4 of their storm troopers where up against one of the shop walls, Sandy’s Sea Shells I think, smoking cigarettes and waiting for nothing but trouble to come by.
“Fuck.” I said under my breath, my first instinct to turn on a dime and head back the other way; it was too late though, they had seen me and the jeering, wormy little voices started coming at me almost immediately.
“Hey!” Marty started up, “It’s Billy Boner! Billy the Backdoor Kid; hey Billy, Billy Boner… you come looking for a hand job or somthin? Didn’t get your rocks off in the shower enough you homo?”
For fucks sake I thought, keeping my head down, not looking at these morons and just continued walking, not too fast, but as quickly as I could towards the lights of the pub a block away that somehow now looked as inviting and safe as the lights of my house had once been.
?Yeah->
“Ha Ha, little homo gets his jollies off watching real men in the shower.” One of the storm troopers spat out as they formed a circle around me in the dark, empty street.
I looked up thinking fuck it, wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t be the last so might as well get on with it and said, “I’m impressed, you fellas are a bunch of real live god damn scholars ain’t ya?” I continued looking Marty right in the eye, “If you want to know the truth, I didn’t even see ya’all in there, my shit got straight as a stovepipe thinking about Marty’s girl Angie slobbin up and down my Johnson…like she did the other night.”
Well it doesn’t take a genius to know what was gonna happen after telling this group of misfits I had the mouth of their leaders girl wrapped around my ho-ho recently, even if it wasn’t a bit of truth to it, and they started coming for me immediately.
“Hey boys, what’s shakin besides that bunch of peas rattling around in those melons of yours?”
We’d all been so busy slinging insult and bravado we hadn’t even heard him coming but there he was, sitting perched on a mailbox, feet dangling, smoking a cigarette and looking at the bunch of us like we were a bunch of stray dogs, wet from a storm.
“Got nothing to do with you Matty, Alias said with more than a little worry.
“Yeah, we’re just fixin to show Billy Boner what happens to faggots who stare in the locker room.” Marty said.
Matty was a year ahead of all of us in school and years older in every other way. He’d never backed away from anything, man, women or child as far as I knew. Hell, I’d heard he had beat the crap outta fifteen tourist kids that was pickin on some Jamaican boy a few years back; whooped every last one of them and sent them cryin to their rich daddies. I was pretty happy to see him I’ll tell you that and although I couldn’t tell if it was gonna change anything regarding the imminent brawl at least I wouldn’t get every bone in my face smashed in.
“I heard about that Childress,” Matty said smirking as he flung his smoke and hopped down from the mailbox. “I’ll tell you though, if I’d seen that skinny white girlie butt of yours, toweling off and all; I figure I’d get a bit exited myself.” He walked right up into the middle of them all as he said it, looking at each of them with an amused grin on his face. Matty wasn’t really that much bigger than any of us, maybe an inch and a few pounds heavier but he carried a hundred stories of mean behind him; and that, made him seem gigantic.
He just stood in the middle of us all, looked old Marty shit-head right in the eye and said, “So seeing as that’s the case, I mean if I was there I suppose I would’ve been staring at you to…well, I figure that means you boys are going to have to show me what happens to faggots also.”
Well, I ain’t never heard a louder bunch of thinking as I did coming out of all those boys heads. Matty Skyles wasn’t any kind of a faggot, you only had to know of him to know that was fact; but if he was willing to insinuate that he was, well, it was going to be a fight that these knuckleheads were going to have to think more than twice about getting into.
They didn’t even say anything, didn’t need to really; Marty just gave me a look that told me to grow eyes in the back of my head, turned around and walked away kicking rocks in disgust and his little boy scout troop just turned and followed, one by one.
“And Childress!” Matty hollered after them, “if I hear you decide to go teaching lessons another day, and I will hear, I’ll be taking that as a personal insult and I will kick your personal ass.”
Matty walked up beside me and we watched them all walk away. My blood stopped pumping a mile a minute and I couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Look Matty, thanks,” I started to say, “I ain’t like that, I was just minding my own business today, wasn’t looking at nothing and it just kinda happ..”
“Hey, it isn’t really anything I care to be discussing with you to be honest.” He said. “Go get your pop out of that bar; I hear he’s getting pretty loaded. I heard he lost his sword boat. Bad deal, getting harder and harder to make a living out on that water; he won’t be the last.”
He turned then and was walking away from me, kind of just strolling with his hands in his pocket.
“And just call me poop, my friend’s call me poop.” He hadn’t even turned around when he said it.
I started making my way down the street and the heavy water smells of fish, fuel and the brine of the ocean was getting heavier, pouring into my nose like some rancid road-kill carcass. I hated the water. I hated being surrounded by it in this god-forsaken island town; hated how small and alone it made me feel and I hated that in the whole big god damn ocean that water couldn’t let my pop find enough fish to keep his boat. That it would let him become the worst kind of drunk; a dreamer without hope. I saw the pub lights as I walked up to the door and they didn’t seem friendly and comforting now, that’s for sure. And I thought as I walked in and smelled the stale beer, peanuts and stink of the marina that nothing in this whole damn world made sense.
Tags: Fiction, Florida, growing up
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.