Luke Goebel - Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

“Know how I lost this hand?” He was going to tell him again. “I cut it off,” he said. “With this goddamn filet knife.” He patted his side where the knife hugged in its sheath with bone sticking out for handle.

“I know it. And I will beat you.”

“One day isn't enough! I can't wait. I won't. I don't want you to learn. I want you to have. To steal it. A posteriori, Cunt!”

Not that the pool was laid without any promise. But he could not go back anyhow to the pool and live with fakers, because should he lose and go back to the lodge he would know his failure and the girl, the redhead he told his dream of beating the Apache, would know and Mother would.

At the pool there were girls and women with wet swimwear ties soaking through places in wraps and pullovers, wet and held against the naked sun-hot flesh. The redheaded girl he'd been with in the flats one night. And another night. Last night! There were drinks at the pool and getups and memories in other families and the plates of food and girls’ magazines and a world he wanted nothing to do with that Mother owned.

Then there was Mother, who he was afraid he cared too much for, even after how she treated Brother, to give himself over to meanness and true hatred.

There was Brother, gone. It made Kid mad to think of him. Drinking, slapping a man over their seats at a singing man's show, riding his motorcycle alone, smiling his smile from boyhood, a guy who was how he was, hardly a distance from himself and himself, there in front of you, knowing he was every inch, not putting on a show, laughing, owning a pistol he drove with, a giant with a laugh like a holiday, two hundred and forty pounds of him without fear, his pockets full of used tissues and mints and always a pack of cigarettes, and his stash, the giant heart in him on the road, but not on the road, but dead. A brother is not a thing to live after without, all of him that was charging into the heart of the country to experience what was happening inside, calmly, centered, profoundly deep, holding it all to himself except the great love he sent right out to anyone worthy.

Mother had bought the resort ranch and their dad was left by Mother and Brother was dead. Brother was nothing like girl assing at the pool. Nothing like Mother. Nothing like any of this, but most like the Apache, but not like Apache.

Staring at the hand made him feel meanness, hatred, his own will. The Corporal who cut one hand half off with another to survive snakebite. Slicing a line from the wedge between middle and ring finger and cutting down to the cuff of wrist. A cuff of wrist and black handcrust remained above the greasecloth sleeve. No ring on either half hand or full hand.

The Apache stared and started up again, sky darkening. “You farting sack of piss.” He stared at the Kid. “Fart piss. Pee bubble.”

“How are you to ride with me with guts without your guts?” he said. “Who besides me can teach you? Who cares what hurts you? Who cares what you feel! You have to hate the whole world. You have to hate what's not yours. Then you'll love. Maybe quit! You don't have it. Go back to the pool and feel kind of sexy and girl-like digging your crotch into the chair and look out at twat. Give up. Find pussy, maybe. Instead of all of this.” He gestured to his wide homeland. “Forget redemption. What are you doing out here anyway. You have heart, but it won't work for its glory.”

Kid had lain in a sunchair and done just that. He'd felt rather girl-like doing just those things, and liked pretty well the feeling. Despite his riding morning and post-lunch, despite lifting weights, pumping iron until his vision turned purple and gold, he lay there feeling sore and sexy at the pool, feeling thin and warm, his chin on cupped hands, butt arched up to the sky, digesting alongside Mother at lunch, eking out a little gas here and there, back where you had to hide your farts, because hiding gas and faking around was all under all that sun.

The Apache lived out in the desert.

Without girls who'd shaved themselves or God-knows to wear what they had on at the ranch. In a squat with a retard and the A/C — A/C he said he bought her at Younkers Department Store. Because he loved her and she wanted it.

A real retarded woman kept in the desert scrub and sand, at his squat, the Corporal's. Corporal so old and leathered. The Kid hated him. As much as he'd told Kid to hate him. No more. Hated Mother. Barely. Hated pool. Younkers Department Store and the A/C? Retard? Brother would laugh. He'd fall apart laughing. This fake shit, he'd call it. This bullshit Apache! Horizontal Retard , the Corporal called her, waiting on him back for him after he rode and won. Brother who had the same face as Kid would laugh. The same voice Kid had stolen long ago, had copied, but couldn't get the heart.

Where was Brother now — out in the gold, up in the wind, up in the high windblown dust, up in the hawk and swoop? The high yonder? Not enough. High heaven? Fuck it.

The whole earth was done. A little shade here. Birds. Trailers with toilets that ran in long pipes through the desert to spill into sand, and chevron TV antennas and running water and no septic. A retard in lace chiffon smoking cigarettes. Or was there a retard? Was it all lies? The stories of the Apaches riding half-off-horseside saddleless and shooting arrows, destroying their enemies, then run off cliffs to death in Texas by half-ass whites with no honor, all the West, only to work for Mother? Fort Davis? The Mescalero Apaches Apache told Kid about? Geronimo and Dahteste — the fighting woman? All in the span of human time on earth, a moment in light of the billions of years of light on this earth.

Before them, the sea had been over this land. Had Kid enough time to study the seabed and live out the desert long enough alongside Apache, discovering the history of arrowheads and fossils found in the earth, the change of millions of years, billions! — each gas and element made mineral turned plant, turned finger grown from sidefin, the redhead and Kid and Apache, if allowed time. But there was never enough time before the Apache wanted to see some show. Some heart. Will. Lies or not, fart pie to retards and Mother! To himgoddamnself. To losing to any man on any fucking pony.

The man held his half hand up to the sky. Held it high, two fingers and half thumb, like a wild-ass Christ, and when they came down they would kick hard. Kid's stomach charged before the hand came down, forgetting the horse, forgetting blood. Forgetting he had only one thing to count with, that horse to race with all his have-to-have-it or go mad with selfwill, but they didn't race. They didn't ride.

A first rain fell hard. Apache looked over at Kid.

“Look at me now, my Kid.”

The Kid looked back at the man's eyes. American Rock and Roll and the brother Kid was thinking of in the first rain he'd ever felt in a desert. Their father's music that became theirs. The first guitar chords, the feedback, then the drums coming in like a heart pumping above the real heart, faking almost at first, but building, knowing in blood that what was coming was right and the chords building and repeating, pumping harder, grown into rockets that lifted off and ripped into strange spheres, leaving the world behind. His father who'd been a GOD to Kid, terrified him, then grew out of it…. Rain fell and the man was staring into him — Kid feeling the guitars pulling his veins off their courses, redirecting blood as the buildings fell and the explosions tore the world down. The saguaros stood and drums pumped blood out from where explosions had opened inside — in the great desert the body became wounded and was leaking, drums beating blood into the sand. Brother loved this. He had lived this way and left, in rock and roll, in knowing himself, in altered pain — in the final release of putting it all on the line and throwing up his huge hands.