J. Osborne: Black Gum

Something left from behind Shane’s dilated eyes. He suddenly looked confused. “I’m gonna kill him with this branch.”

Charlie picked the tree limb from his cousin’s grip. “Go home.”

Shane hesitated.

I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “Come on,” I said.

We stumbled down the street.

Charlie turned to the Juggalos. “Normally I’d say come on home with us and smoke something. But when he gets like this…”

Shane howled and I wrapped him up in my arms and carried him.

Charlie shrugged. “I better get on.”

The next morning I woke up and Shane looked over at me from where he sat and said, “I’m hungry.”

We walked to the Corner Store and waved hello the man behind the counter. Shane poured himself a slushie and bought some chips and talked to the clerk a bit and we went out front and sat on a picnic table off to the side and he ate his chips. Watched passersby slip on the ice.

A man in a leather jacket came out of the dark and sat between us. He had a pirate ship tattooed across his face.

He pointed at the tattoo under Shane’s eye. “What’s this dagger mean?”

“Nothing.”

He pointed at the “580” across Shane’s chin. “What’s this mean?”

“It’s the area code.”

“Where am I?”

Shane told him.

“Do you have a videogame system?”

“Yeah.”

The man rummaged through his bags. Pulled out a loaf of white bread. “I got this bread. Can I come over and play?”

Shane motioned with the bag of chips. “No.”

The man was quiet for a bit. “What’s these teardrops mean?”

“Means I’m super sad.”

“What’s this on your neck?”

“It’s a Buddha.”

“It’s a Buddha!” the man yelled. He pointed at the giant tattoo on his face. “You know what this pirate ship means?”

“What?”

The man in the leather jacket hopped up and put his hands on his knees and leaned into Shane’s face. “It means I’m a motherfucking PIRATE.”

After that the man sat down, put some sunglasses on, ate his bread, and said not one more word to Shane Tilden. He got up and left.

The snow picked up again.

The clerk came out and lit a cigarette. Offered the pack to Shane.

“No, thanks. I only smoke when I drink.”

The clerk nodded. “Me, too.”

Cars hissed past on the wet road. I took a cigarette.

The clerk said, “You attract them.”

“I seem to.”

“All that shit on your face.”

“Yeah.”

We smoked and sat and after a time we went back to Charlie’s. Shane gathered his things and left without saying a word.

I signed up for an online dating site. I spent a lot of time picking the right profile picture.

I couldn’t figure what to write in the “About Me” section.

Charlie saw me on the computer and came up and looked over my shoulder.

“OkCupid.”

“Yeah.”

He took a sip of beer. “They make those for queers, too, you know.”

“Shut up.”

“You have a kind of sad need for pussy, don’t you?”

“I just like it.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I’m not gay.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

I turned back to the computer. “I got a message already.”

“Have fun fucking weird internet people. I’m gonna go be normal and not get laid until I see something I actually like.”

I waited fifteen minutes before I responded to this message. The woman’s name was Hanna.

That Sunday, Charlie told me we needed to go to church.

I told him I’d pass. He told me they paid $50 just to show up.

I said, “Okay.”

The preacher paced at the podium. He raised his arm above his head. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Dropped his hand on “killed.”

The church was cramped. Christmas tree in the corner. Someone coughed.

The preacher smiled. One gold tooth. “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Someone said, “I don’t blame you.”

He paced faster. Windpants swishing. Despite the cold in the room, he began to sweat. That mantra, repeated as he ran his fingers through wet curly hair: “If I’d met you when I was young, I would have killed you.”

Over and over. The room churning a bit. Behind us, someone spoke in tongues.

The congregation said it with him, everyone shouting “killed” with the holy man, his hand chopping the air.

He stopped and so did the crowd.

Took a breath. “My friend Harold was bad. He was bad. If Harold and I met you, back when we were young, we would have killed you.”

Leaned on the podium. “Harold had a stomach, he could never keep it down. Anything he ate was gonna tear him up. Changed with the seasons. In the summer he couldn’t eat hardly anything without getting sick. In the winter, when it got cold like it is, he could eat everything. Never seen someone eat as much. But just in the winter. Didn’t eat more than a sandwich in the summer. He drank a lot of coffee. On top of everything else. His favorite mug had a snake on it. He liked robots and we were roommates and he had to be home to watch his TV with the lasers and I liked them okay, too. I sometimes called him Terminator because he was so tall. In the summer he’d hold his stomach and watch robots. We didn’t go out because it was only a matter of time before someone said something. You know how it is. I know you know how it is.”

The congregation nodded. Men with small eyes. Women in surplus jackets.

“When we were younger, we killed a man just down the road from here. In the bar talking about his new shoes. Got drunk and we followed him out there and took what was in his wallet, but Harold hit him too hard. We killed people who deserved it and we’d watch robots and wonder on it.”

The man behind me amped up the tongues.

The preacher pointed. “That sound, we would have killed you.”

The man behind me scaled back the tongues.

“I ate dinner at Harold’s house as a child. His father was a good man and his mother was good, too. He had brothers and sisters that had children. He couldn’t be that, though. Neither of us could. We were in and out of jail but when we were both out, we were together. I loved Harold. After a time we grew up. I kept a steady job and he did, too. We met women and we moved on and we calmed down. We became men. I had a son. He’s a grown man now himself. Harold had a daughter and we’d joke about them getting married but they never did. He once asked me over the phone if I thought it was wrong, how we were, and I said of course it was. No way you could figure it to not be wrong. We were heathens. Godless heathens.”

Someone said, “Praise Jesus.”

The preacher pushed off the pulpit and put his hands in his pockets. “His guts were gonna take him. Never went to the doctor. At first he couldn’t because of money but after a while you just don’t think about it. I wonder would it have gotten him. I wonder would he have been watching his stories. I don’t know. When he came to my house we went fishing down by the pond and got into an argument about god knows what and god knows we argued all the time, all our lives. But I hadn’t seen him in a while and it was the dry heat of summer and that stomach was killing him and the tones of his voice sounded wrong to me and so I hit him. He fell back and landed wrong and he was gone, just like that. I miss him.”

The congregation didn’t move but for the few folks now recording the sermon on their cell phones.

He scratched the corner of his mouth.