Luke Goebel - Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

Here were girls, thin-limbed and covered in little hairs. Their eyebrows tweezed to nothing. Others had eyebrows thick as birds’ wings. Here were women.

Keiko stood in the parking lot and scratched at a thigh. He looked up and saw a cloud like a head with a moon going through it like a torch.

“Think Keiko's alright?” Other said, but nobody responded. They were each taking in the view.

Glum girls stood against the wall and looked away, striking their butts against the painted cinderblocks. The good-lookers all stood in a circle on center court and inside the circle was a girl wearing a brace. It started down at her collarbones and held bars that rose up and attached to pins sticking out of her skull. She looked caged inside there. And her eyes moved. She'd been shot accidently in the neck by a stray bullet from a helicopter on her way to school one day. She would wear the brace until spring.

The troop neared and she said, “Watch out! Don't let them bump.” The other girls stared at the boys’ torn clothes and their filthy hands, but noticed also how darkly tanned and the way the boys were looking at them and weren't afraid. Girls liked Cutlass's haircut. Void rubbed his knees and Gill put his hand in a pocket. He started to move it inside and walked over to the saddest-looking girl against a wall.

Chance, Worm, Baxal, Bean, and Cutlass were all trying to figure which girls would be easiest to dance with, and which were tall enough, so that while dancing they could put their hands low on the girls’ waistlines and let their fingertips graze the highest point of their smooth bottoms.

Cutlass was first to approach the circle of girls. Worm, Baxal, Chance, Void, and Bean were watching.

“You girls still live with your mothers,” Cutlass announced, not like a question.

“Where else?” the girl with the neck scoffed, and another girl in a bright yellow tube top said, “Yeah.” This was one Cutlass didn't think would be easiest to dance with. Plus she was short.

“We have quit our mothers,” Cutlass said. “We live down at the beach with our friend Keiko. We're thieves. We stay up drinking beer, have fires, and we steal whatever we want. We've come to take you with us.”

“That's lame,” the girl with the broken neck said. But another girl with hair on her lip said, “Cool.”

“Yeah,” Cutlass said, “very cool. You want to dance with us?”

“With all of you?” she laughed like he'd made some sort of mistake. Cutlass did not laugh. He had not made a mistake. “With me first, then we'll see,” he took her hand and it was soft. He moved her away from the rest of them. Together they swayed. Cutlass hooked the tips of his thumbs together, and put his hands low on the girl's waistline.

“What's your name?

“Clementine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Why?” Cutlass asked.

“I don't know, what's yours?”

“Mine's Cutlass.”

“Like the car?”

“Sure, like the car. What else?”

She smelled of nail polish and chocolate. Her hair was up in a waterfall and his fingers felt dirty.

The other boys from the troop were soon dancing, and each couple was dancing differently.

Bean was so short that his nose reached up only above the waist of the girl he was dancing with, and Cutlass, seeing this, wondered how Bean had ended up with the tallest of the girls. Worm had his partner in a sort of headlock and was skipping wildly in place. Gill was grinding with the sad-looking girl in the corner. Somehow, a ring of couples had formed around the girl with the neck who was standing in the center of them all, protected from any further harm that could be occasioned upon her.

“We've got us a real nice beach,” Cutlass told Clementine. “Our friend Keiko's probably getting us more beer. You smell like nail polish, you know?”

“Thanks.”

“You girls can come with us.”

“Can we just dance a bit?”

“Fine. But I like you. You're coming.”

Terrorism was big lately. There were increases in security. The girls felt good and the boys didn't care about NAFTA. Mexico and bullfights would be a thing in their futures. Fuck terrorism.

Keiko was back from the store with a full case of cans. He saw a young girl with black braids and dark nail polish smoking a whole cigarette and offered her a beer.

“You know, I'm not as old as I look,” Keiko said.

“Well, you seem old.”

“I can fight dogs. No problem.”

“Dogs?”

“Back at the beach. We've got a camp and I wrestle. You should come.”

“This is good beer.” She had never had a whole beer.

“Look. I'm their leader. This whole troop of guys inside idolizes me. We live at the beach and I take care of them. I try not to hurt the dogs. I'm trying to talk to you.” She squinted and really looked at his face for the first time. He looked focused.

“Meet my new dogs, come to the beach. Haven't you ever been with a man with beer on the beach? No! Well, let's go.” He was so excited. He would never die — all heart and goodness.

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(Like my brother, Carl. These words, these stupid words. My heart my brother, my first friend, my amigo, my miss, I miss, oh, the dumb earth. You should have seen him. You'll never know. Or you do. He and his friends at a campfire in a backyard in Oregon. The big pine trees in his yard on the East Side, somewhere near Mt. Tabor. Near the house where he was found. Us all as in life, in the firelight, all alive. All accounted for. Him drinking bottles. Me smoking smoking smoking. No plan but the life ahead, long as could be imagined.)

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The chaperones warned how they would not be allowed back in, but everyone was talking and hollering and the girls were saying, ‘For a little bit only.’ ‘Just one beer.’ And ‘Where do you get the beer?’ And ‘What about your parents?’ ‘Aren't they worried?’ And the boys said, ‘We don't care,’ though some really did. Hardly, though, with the girls!

When they neared the beach, Clementine was riding on Cutlass's back and her little breasts jiggled in her padded bra. Bean rode on the tallest girl's back and was mock-kicking her in the kidneys as if wearing spurs. Gill hadn't even left the dance and was still grinding against the saddest girl in the corner.

They got closer and Baxal said, “Shhhhhh.” They saw an outline of Keiko on top of some little creature by the fire. The boys first thought it was a dog. Then they knew it was a person.

Keiko wasn't being mean. He had a girl under him and her head was on the sand. She was whispering to Keiko and touching his face. Her fingers were thin and her black nail polish lit shiny by the flames, and she smoked with a long thin hand.

“What do you see in the clouds?” Keiko asked her.

“I see a whale over there. That one's like a turtle. That feather-looking cloud looks like a sword, and that one looks like a dog. What do you think they look like?”

“The boys are all gonna leave me and then the dogs will run away.”

“Keiko, you know I can't be your girlfriend,” the girl said and made a face and Keiko jerked his face towards her.

“Then what are you even doing here?”

“Keiko,” Cutlass said, “we've come to watch you wrestle the dogs!”

“I know,” Keiko said, “I know. I know you have. And you brought the girls to watch. Now I won't do it.”

“What do you mean? You always wrestle. These girls have come to see.”

“Then tonight I don't,” he said and got up from the girl and walked towards the sea. They didn't know what he was doing. He was big looking, even out in the silver hoop of wet, splashing in the final roll of waves.

They watched him push out into the deep, beyond the reach of firelight. Barely there in the moonlight, he was using his heft against the dark water.