Luke Goebel - Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

Squeaky comes over the other Friday and we have a showdown at the ranch and he's drunk and the place is a stinking mess. Full of rat holes I guess he couldn't see because he was drunk and his eyes were a mess and he stood there fuming around with his barrel chest and blazing red neck and squeaky voice looking at how my toilets aren't scrubbed free of urine and my clothes are all over the floor and my dirty videos on the dresser and cigarettes stamped out in the wooden bowls his dead mother left he and his dad — Squeak's brother is dead, too. The whole ranch used to have furniture out front on the front porch that's rotting off and ashtrays everywhere and photos of Squeak and his big brother, handsome in cowboy hats and lariats on their sides on their white and golden horses. Two brothers grinning as in a photograph on one wall of the ranch. Like that old Camel man with the curly hair lighting up another old cig. Like America, I mean. The last bit of the unbreakable America that lives. That was me and my brother, too, just like this. But then you understand it's me now at the ranch only.

When I came back from Oregon, that old king rat was dead on my counter, that big wood rat, neck snapped and dried blood was pooled around and stuck to the trap and the fur on the thing, and the first item I noticed was the smell of death and I was wearing my brother's clothes and standing around sobbing all alone in the living room looking at the kitchen and out the window like someone was going to come down the long road and give me a hug, which didn't happen. Do I have to tell you? I'd never been to a funeral before I carried my brother in a church. WE are Catholic. American. Wild. Lunatics. We've been far out. Now I'm here in the ranch. SHIT!

I sat down on the couch and tried to smoke but couldn't.

So I understand the stains in the toilets and why the wooden bowls Squeaky's mother loved and used for salad in the summer upset him and why he wasn't happy with me, him drawling away and lurching about like he was, but don't kid yourself, I've never been handsome on a horse with a lasso. [Want to hear what I read on a menu in Portugal that broke my heart the same week my brother died, and I had no way to know he would: Omelet with french fries and salad . In English. On a menu.] Besides, there I stood a younger brother just like him, with no clue on going on and I'm no kid anymore, don't kid yourself, but have I figured out what to do? Or has Squeaky? Give me a joke! No.

Squeaky is a four time International Gay Rodeo Association Grand Champ and will probably sue me for writing about him and using his name. His name is on the internet. I think he switched electrical boxes on me from one house to the other. I met him by calling a real estate sign for a different house and telling the guy what I wanted. He said no and hung up. Then called back an hour later. Offered me Squeaky's place. Told me how to get there, didn't know my name, told me to go inside if I wasn't afraid of dogs. I went in and called the guy and said I'd take it. He said Andy and Squeaky would move out and live in his back house. I didn't understand a thing about what was going on. I didn't even know what “roper” meant when the real estate agent told me about Squeakers and Andy being ropers. Squeaky still has my brother's A/C unit that was very expensive and stands in the middle of a room and I still owe Squeaky 300 dollars. Let that be entered as evidence in the courtroom wherein Squeaks sues me. Whatever you get, Squeak! Plus 300 buckaroos, Buckaroo. Upon giving me back my damn A/C.

I left the Ace Hardware and went to the Soap Sponge to wash the truck. I'm getting long winded.

I finished washing and no miracles had happened all day but sun and the wispy clouds of an October day in Texas lilting around up there sort of gay up in the sky. Plus I worked all morning at my job, trying to convince college students I advise that there's something to this world anymore even though I wouldn't plan on it. I go over to the vacuum machines that charge you a dollar and fifty cents just to move air through a tube. I start sucking away the Jewely dog hair inside the truck and sucking up the dirt in the cup holders and sucking the cracks in the leather seats where the sand from the ranch collects. You want some advice? I don't have any. And into the stall next to me pulls a car with these two women inside and one is younger and she hops out of the car-door closest to me and has tight jeans on with no front pockets but the lines like front pockets stitched on but no pockets at all, which is the new thing, I guess, because they aren't even jeans, and the back of the jeans covered in sequins making crosses on either ass cheek, both cheeks, sparkling like that in the Texas sun.

She's got a shirt on that's an eagle in sequins. A little skin above the waistline and hipbones and some thighs. I'm thinking I haven't had any touching in so long I've started to count the months. She starts sucking away, having paid her money, and she's sucking up the crumbs and hair and little french fries and sequins and what have you. So… here is the part I've been getting to. I start thinking it over and then I say,

“Hey, why don't you let me? I mean, why don't you get a good man like me to do that work for you?”

She looks at me and she thinks for a second, and the sucking is running, so that's money ticking away. Then says, “Okay, have at it,” and sticks the hose at me and I take it and start sucking the cracks and getting into the grooves. It's just her and this other woman in the front, who is big, too, but who is not the fat to make the heart swim, as she has got the fat inside her to turn mean and you could see that from her face. Oh, God, sometimes the world drags you over the coals and all you can do is get a good handful of skin and pull it away from your heart, and try to get that heart as close to the coals as possible. Or cover it in fat. I want to live in the past or die. How is that getting close to the coals? The world has done it for me, or I have, or haven't, who knows? What has it done? Who?

Well, guess who comes up driving in his truck? Squeaky! He climbs out of his truck cab and starts shouting me up and down because he'd snuck into the ranch while I was over at the hardware store and found that rat hole bigger than a baseball. Actually, he says it's as big as a baseball. The girl gets in the car and the other drives them away. Then Squeaky tells me he's going to keep my deposit on the ranch he already charged me, and he leaves. I am hot. I'm sweating through my shirt. I'm thirsty and alone. In nowhere East Texas. It hits me like a ton of dirt. I have no idea what I'm doing out here in America, America, America. What should I do? I'd decided I'd just go and fix that rat hole back at the ranch, I thought, the one I had to move out of anyhow. I love Squeaky if you didn't notice. So, there it was. Isn't it just like I say it is? Don't people find a way to get back at you? Well, don't they?

YOU WILL PLAY THE PARTof work. I work and you work. It is all about doing a little work on a Saturday. It's about a little housework, anyhow. It's about riding the up and down feelings. Remember when there was a house and you lived there with your father and mother and orange juice came in a cardboard tube with a lid? Remember seeing Mommy and Daddy, and you saw Daddy's penis and you were a boy and your mommy didn't have a penis, and you, little you, were Mommy and Daddy, and you and your daddy had penises and Mommy didn't. Or you were a little girl and you were also Mommy and Daddy, and you and Mommy had vaginas and Daddy had a penis from his? Well, there were chores to do then.

A little domestic chore time is what we are up to. You've done chores right? We all did chores, no? There were chores to do once. Remember the work that we had to do? Remember being a kid and having chores. I still have them, but I don't of course. I do what I want to do now, but I miss having those chores. I can go to restaurants at any time in the a.m. and eat and do whatever I like. Chores are what this has to do with you! You are me in the chores we might do on a Saturday afternoon. After rehabs. After jail. After love. After the big never ending loss.