Dave Zeltserman - Fast Lane

I smiled over the scare I’d put myself through. I had a week before my deadline and that was more than enough time for what I had to do.

The phone rang. I answered it and got back only faint static. “Hello?” I tried again. I was about to hang up when an old man’s voice crackled over the line.

“Clem Smalley?”

“Sorry, wrong number.” But I didn’t hang up. I held onto the phone for dear life, listening to my heart do a bongo solo through the silence.

“Sure ain’t no wrong number,” the old man said. “You’re Clem Smalley. Same one from Carson City, Nevada. You be at Charlie’s Silver Dollar Bar in two hours.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It better be possible. For your sake, Clem.”

“Where’s Charlie’s?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. Just make sure you be there.”

“Look,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Don’t worry none about that. I know who you are and that’s all that matters.” The old man coughed, and from the sound of it, spat up some phlegm. “I know all about you.”

“Wait a min-”

The phone went dead.

* * * * *

You’re probably wondering how I knew it was an old man calling me. Well, that’s a reasonable question since it can be pretty hard to judge a person’s age over the phone, but ever since I saw him at the Oklahoma City train station I’d been half expecting him to call. Since I was expecting it, I had no problem recognizing his voice.

I was born Clem Smalley and raised in Carson City, Nevada. My faithful readers are pretty much ignorant of my humble beginnings, because I guess I don’t like bragging about how with so little I was able to accomplish so much through nothing but plain hard work, dedication, and perspiration. Now Poppa had hurt his back way before I was born and was on disability. And Momma worked as hard as a woman could. But they certainly loved their boy. What they couldn’t give me in material goods, they sure made up for in other ways. I remember one day . . . .

* * * * *

I was about six and my momma was screaming that he had killed me. I tried to cry out to her that I wasn’t dead. My eyes were open but everything was black. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t yell to her that everything was okay. Momma picked me up in her arms and held me tight. She was crying hard, her tears falling hot on my face. Everything was dizzy, suffocating. Then I didn’t remember anything until I woke up in a hospital bed.

The next three days were the happiest of my young life. Momma was with me in the hospital most of the time. They gave me ice cream. It was quiet and peaceful, and people were nice to me. I asked Momma if I could stay there forever and not have to go home.

That made her cry. She told me I’d have to go home when I got better, but she would never let him beat me again. Well, I guess I didn’t really want to stay there. I didn’t like the way the doctors and nurses looked at Momma when she wasn’t noticing, and I didn’t like the things they whispered about her when they thought I was asleep. What happened wasn’t Momma’s fault, and it wasn’t fair of them to say it was.

When Momma took me home he was waiting for us. When I walked by, he kicked at me, calling me a little girl for not being able to take a spanking.

Poppa just didn’t have no use for a son. Momma had obliged him with three daughters before me and that was what he wanted. He could find a use for girls and he was hoping Momma would be able to give him one more. I turned out to be a bitter disappointment, Poppa not being a pervert or anything.

I only remember one of my sisters, and she left us before I was able to talk. I always wondered what happened to them. I’m sure life was as hard for them as it was for me, having to survive on their own at such young ages. Poppa just didn’t leave them any other choice, unless you consider the other way a choice. I often do wonder about them, though.

Poor Momma. She tried to keep her promise. When he started beating me again, Momma would get in the way, blocking the belt strap with her own frail body. While she protected me, I lay there like a stinking coward, screaming at him to stop, screaming that I would kill him. Later, when he was drunk and oblivious to the world, I’d stand over him with his razor. Sometimes I stood there for hours, trying to work up the courage to cut his throat. But my hands would shake and my knees would turn to water and I couldn’t do it.

I wish I had been able to, at least for her sake. Momma wasn’t strong enough to take all those beatings and all that meanness, not with working as hard as she had to. When I was thirteen she died and left me alone with no one to protect me.

In his grief, Poppa started drinking more and it wasn’t long before he had himself a stroke. It left him crippled on his right side, forcing him to use a cane to get around. Since he didn’t have the strength anymore to beat me, he had to focus his meanness in other ways. When I helped him get into the bath or brought him his food he would say pretty nasty things, things a father just shouldn’t say to a son.

“You planning on deserting me like your whore sisters did, you ungrateful little bastard?”

And I would be quiet.

“When your momma was having you, she should have aborted you and flushed you down the toilet. I flush better things than you down the toilet every goddamned day.”

And I wouldn’t say a word. At least not outwardly. Inside I was screaming every obscenity known to man. But it didn’t help a bit.

I tried so hard to make him see I was good, that he could be proud of me. I was doing poorly at school, so according to Poppa I had crap for brains. So I worked as hard as I could and started doing better. According to Poppa I was then nothing more than a stinking no-good cheater.

When I worked six hours after school to help pay for what the welfare checks couldn’t, I was an ungrateful piece of garbage for not being there to wait on him. When I brought home the prettiest girl in school, she was a goddamn whore cunt for being with an ugly worthless bastard like myself. I tell you, some things a man has no right to say to anyone no matter how much he might be hurting. Some things should be made to choke in a man’s throat.

* * * * *

After the stroke, the doctors told him he had to quit drinking, but that was like telling a baby not to drool. He gave me holy hell for not bringing booze back to him. But I wouldn’t do it. He knew he wasn’t supposed to drink and if he wanted to, well, he’d just have to get to a bar himself. So he would curse me like all hell, and get out of his bed, and with his crippled body, struggle the two blocks to the Black Horse Pub, moving like a falling apart wind-up toy.

If I had brought him the alcohol he would never have left his bed. It wasn’t that I enjoyed watching a crippled gimp humiliating himself for a lousy drink. That wasn’t all of it, although I’m sure that’s what he thought. I wanted him out there on the streets.

I was seventeen when he was killed in a hit and run accident. He had gone out late that night and with the money he took from me I knew he wouldn’t be coming back until closing time. Before then I found a car and hot-wired it. I wanted it to look like a bunch of drunken kids who were too sloshed for my poor poppa’s good, so I brought along a half-dozen bottles of booze. After spilling some of the alcohol around and taking a few drinks myself, I drove the car about a block from the pub and waited. I thought of Momma, and I thought of the sisters he stole from me, and my body started shaking worse than the goddamn motor, worse than the times I’d bent over him with his razor.

This time, though, I stood my ground and waited.