Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

But the snake lodged its fangs in my neck. Latched on and wouldn't let go. Me, Rhonda, betrayed again. I rolled around on the floor. Trying to rip it off but it was hopeless. There was nothing I could do. I yanked on the shaft of its body, but it wouldn't let go. I could feel the venom shooting from the fangs. Could feel it blasting through me at mach speeds. It was like all that poison ran straight to my brain. Because suddenly I knew what I was supposed to do. Suddenly I knew what was supposed to happen. I knew that there was a way to make everything in my life all right again. Nothing was going to get better until I took care of the past. Locked it away so it couldn't keep coming back from the dead.

The snake shot one more massive blast of venom into my neck; I stopped moving and my hands buzzed, even my mannequin hand. The snake wound up the couch's leg and wiggled back into its decimated guts; I lay on the floor and listened to every whisper that came to me from the poison, those supple suggestions, as the venom outlined the plan.

When I woke up, my head rested in little-Rhonda's lap. The light on his helmet was off. He stroked my hair.

"Am I dead?" I asked.

"What did it tell you to do?"

"We have to go to Phoenix."

"?" W y

"To burn down our house."

Before Letch lived with us, my mom used to take me on her drinking expeditions. She didn't like to pay for cocktails or babysitters. We'd walk into one of our regular bars, and some guy would say, "Hey, look, it's the psychic kid." Everyone would smile at me and slap my shoulders as we walked deep into the joint. Mom would help me onto a stool, and the bartender would put a 7UP with a handful of old cherries in front of me. "It's on the house, kind sir," he'd say, and my mom would lean across the bar and kiss him on the cheek, ordering herself a fuzzy navel. Blended. Nice and thick.

Tonight, the bartender's name was Jerry, and his beard was black, but on one side of his face, he had a patch of gray whiskers, like someone had soaked a paintbrush and smacked him across the cheek with it.

"I can beat the psychic kid tonight," he said, winking at my mom.

Since she didn't like to pay her bar tab, my mom made all these drunks believe I was psychic. Really, I was just honed. We'd spent hours practicing the scam. She'd make me do it over and over again, saying, I needyou, hahy. We don't have much money so we have to improvise.

I never thought to ask where she learned this trick. I did what she told me to.

Mom would take a square cocktail napkin and lay it on the bar and put a quarter on each of its corners. I was to shut my eyes and hold my hand over them, so there was no way I could peek. Then the newest contestant would point at one of the quarters, and it was my job to KNOW which quarter they picked. If I was right, they had to buy my mom a drink.

And I was always right. I'd uncover my eyes and wave my hand over the napkin all slow, pretending to feel the quarters' auras, really milking the moment because all the people around us would be paying attention to me, and I can't tell you how good it felt, even now just thinking about it, I remember those nights being warm. Once, one of my uncles in that alcoholic family had come up to me after I'd dazzled him by picking the right quarter; he got down onto a knee, onto my level, and looked me in the eye: "I used to be just like you," smiling, "but now I'm a disaster."

Sometimes while I'd be surrounded by all of them, I'd even say, "Abracadabra!" I'd say it because it made everyone howl, big toothy grins showing over the lips of their cocktail glasses.

Not that I needed any magic. I always picked the right coin. Remember this was white trash sleight-of-hand. My mom had a cocktail napkin under her drink, too, so when the latest contestant selected a certain quarter, my mom would take a sip of her blended — nice and thick — fuzzy navel and she'd set it back down on the corner of her drink's napkin that corresponded to the corner that the person had just picked on the other napkin. All I had to do was give a sneaky glance at my mom's drink, and I always knew which corner was the winner.

That night, though, I was tired of playing the psychic kid. We'd been out drinking four nights straight and I just wanted to go home.

"What's your wager?" my mom said to Jerry.

"I'll bet you three cocktails I can beat the psychic kid," he said, patting my shoulder. "This little champion."

I should tell you, too, that my mom didn't have any money. Why would she bother to bring any along? I never lost.

The bar's crowd closed in around me, about twenty people, mostly gray hairs, except for my mom. She set up the scam: square cocktail napkin, quarters on its corners.

She told me to lay my head on the bar, which was kind of sticky on my forehead and smelled like black licorice. She told me not to cheat.

While my head was down, Jerry pointed to one of the quarters.

While my head was down, I decided that I didn't feel like being a psychic kid tonight and since I knew my mom didn't have any money, I figured we would have to go home if I got it wrong.

While my head was down, I decided that definitely, definitely I would get it wrong.

I raised my head and didn't look over at her cocktail napkin. I made sure she noticed, too, that I wasn't looking over there. I kept my neck craned up, eyes closed, pretended I was contacting the spirits that were going to help me pick the right quarter.

"Abracadabra!" I said, and right on cue, the entire clog of people fixed around us released their jaded laughs. I did a few more waves of the hand and said, "The spirits have spoken and I know which one it is."

I pointed at a quarter.

Suddenly there wasn't any talking or laughing. All the airborne syllables died. All the bar's noises were pulled into a vacuum and held hostage.

"This the one?" I asked.

"No," Jerry said.

The people, my extended family, slinked and limped away from me.

My mom yanked me off the stool before I'd even had a chance to eat all the old cherries bobbing in my 7UP. She told Jerry we'd be right back. She heaved me through the bar's front door and as soon as we were in the parking lot, she said, "You've got some nerve."

"It was a mistake," I said.

"Like hell," she said. "What's wrong with you?"

"There's nothing wrong with me."

"Why did you do it?"

A cockroach walked between us on the pavement and I stepped on it.

I could tell she wanted to scream, that she wanted to get really heated about this, but something seemed to erode her hostility. The look in her eyes wilted from anger to sadness. She sank her hand in her purse and fumbled for her keys, pulling them out, accidentally dropping them in the mucus of squashed roach.

"Hopeless," she said, bending over to grab them and smearing the crushed bug on her skirt. She turned and walked to the car without looking at me. "Everything is hopeless."

Little-Rhonda and I rented a Dodge Neon and sped south on 1–5. I kept seeing these odd black shapes scattered on the side of the road that looked like dead seals, but they were only blown tires.

Music yelled on the speakers. Rock and roll.

I hadn't stopped smoking since we started driving.

Little-Rhonda rubbed the dashboard and said, "Is this the best you could do?"