Luke Goebel - Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours

I stopped at the ice cream parlor near Detroit Lake for an iced espresso.

“Can I get some room in that,” I said to the lady. There was nothing but room for states and states over. This was the wide West.

How much, the lady said.

“How much room you want?” she said. There was a lake outside, Detroit Lake, and pine trees hot in the sun.

“Just enough to stick my whole head in,” I told her, and she laughed.

“Never give them a straight answer,” I said. “They don't want one.”

“What do they want?” she said. She was old and looked skeptical.

“What's the last point you had you any man?” I said.

She gave me the look.

I looked her back in the same way.

We went behind the ice cream cooler and she slipped off her pants. When we were finished, she shut up the store and we went out to my car. The Bald Eagle nested in the back seat. Upholstery had been torn apart, and the foam and springs were all out in the sun.

The windows had been left down. It was my fault, To Hell with it, then. We started driving fast for New York City. When I turned around, I saw the Eagle's feathers flapping in the wind. His wings were spread across the back seat. Now, here's a worthwhile enterprise I figured: 100,000 dollars per Bald Eagle feather and a year in jail each. We were all facing serious charges. The Eagle most of all. He wasn't an Indian, either. Plus my not having a license to drive, if we made it to New York we would be our own heroes I decided and the old woman would become my wife; she'd be pregnant, too. (Catherine and I weren't together yet, but had been some.)

Watch out Pappa. We are coming. And we're never going to stop. Watch out you old head of white hair. We are never going to stop and then we are turning back for the West. To hell with it all, I shouted. To Hell with this having to die. Here comes your boy, Pappa. Here comes your boy — and Hot Pine, and Bald Eagle, and the Old Sexpot right alongside. We are never going to stop — any of us. We are never going to die. Here comes your boy. Here comes all what you have made.

IT WAS TIMEto play the cowboy. One got a ranch at the end of a long road, a hundred acres of flat, and then got a dog. One was he. (He was me, why pretend?) He (why say he again? I'll tell you why: to give the old “I” word a break.) — he found a posting. The dog was female, to be killed the next day, the posting said. Or put into a killing shelter. She looked lucky. He decided to go and see.

There was this old man with shaky hands who had been the man's friend. He wore a wide hat and leathery pants, oiled and stiff, made of oiled canvas. He was handsome and told great stories of long ago when the world was the man's world. He was a brilliant liar, but the truth was his every word rang true. The old man told one story that always stuck in the new cowboy's brain. It was like a golden lonesome American splinter in there. The splinter worked its way around as the fake cowboy drove the country, which was going from shit to shittier, and found a ranch to rent and now he was going to look at a dog. This was East Texas.

The story with the dog is another story. Needs told. The dog is central to this thing (the book). Everyone has a good dog story.

The old man's story with a dog was that the old man had his second wife and an apartment with fine wooden floors in the California sun, and had decided to paint, or do some varnishing, but had to cook up something on the stove as preparation, or maybe he was smoking, or both? Does one cook varnish of a certain kind? Those old hands back when they were young and handsome, they lit a fire, then added water. The thing spread. Life gets out of hand. He had a dog, an apartment, a wife, and a fire. He ran through the apartment yelling for the dog. The dog and only the dog. This was the old sort of lying. He let the wife fend for her life and went for his dog. But this isn't my story to tell. I should stop. It belongs to another man, but I'll tell it anyway. I'll steal it. It goes like this: the old man was yelling and whooping for Cody, Cody, Cody — the old dog he loved more than her.

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The new cowboy found the apartment where the people lived who had the dog. They were not his types of people. The woman was overpowering. The young man of the couple sat with his hands in his hands, failed and failing.

The puppy was a runt with a busted leg that had healed. Her name was Jewely — the puppy's name was. The woman wanted one hundred and fifty dollars to rehome her. This was the predicament, to save the dog or not. Her man wanted whatever the woman wanted. It was a little pup. The new cowboy had never heard of rehoming fees. The dog was otherwise going to be put in a kill shelter, the woman said. Varnished. Cooked. The new cowboy had had a dog, once, all his own, but it'd run away. He'd never had a wife. His true love had just left for a trip to Europe.

The dog Jewely wasn't his kind of dog, but he drove around with her after, and he'd paid the money. She would not look at him. He got her home and they entered his newly rented ranch, which was old to the owner and didn't matter at all to the owner's deceased wife. He put on one of their records. He danced with his shirt off and Jewely yipped and ran over the old floors and slid a little. She was tiny. He fed her hunks of a huge ham and she became a better dog all at once. She was four months old, or three, and had one blue eye and one brown eye. The dog chased him around the house. He had a drink and a cig and danced the entire side of a country western album and the dog chased him around. Then he fed Jewely the rest of the ham she could eat.

But in the story that the old man had told, the one that stuck in the new cowboy's mind, the old man had been young and in New York City. He had gone to a fine clothing store where he'd bought himself a great golden corduroy suit. The suit was ribbed and had big lapels and large brown buttons. There was something else about the suit the young cowboy could never recall, which the old man had told — still with the suit in its fantastic box, he went and picked up his fiancée and they drove to marry in the desert. Then life got out of hand, even that very consummate night. If you want to know more, contact the man who lived it. Upper One Side. New York, New York. Getting the picture? How it's me and him, but in the end he's out of the picture.

The next night after getting the dog, the new cowboy unpacked all of his boxes of things he'd driven with from New York.

He brought them into the ranch house and unpacked the boxes while Jewely watched. He found a barrel out by some pens and started a fire in his sand yard inside that barrel with all of his old boxes. It burned high and very near the house. Jewely chased charred bits of cardboard and the new cowboy was happier. Ash spread in the wind. It was snowing soot in East Texas.

On the carousel horse, reflected in the mirror, later on, inside the trailer/house, not drunk but drunk, he saw the bit and pliers and cinchers on the carousel horse in the mirror and thought of the woman who had lived in this old trailer he rented, who was dead. Her perfume still on a shelf. He still had all his family living. He meaning I. I, of course, I. He looked at himself. I did. He was just a naked crazy man in a room looking at himself in the mirror. Here was youth gone nearly. He could not remember the word that the old man had used regarding the suit. I still cannot. Catherine and I were still together and Carl was living.

IF I EVERmeet a man named Manuelo from Paris, he'd better watch his fucking head. I mean it. I told her one day when I was soaked with rain, in a white shirt stained brown from shoulder to opposite hip, from a cheap leather strap wet from the rain. I was using the strap to hold a bag with my belongings in it. It needed to be said. I'd been walking in rain lost talking, talking to myself, appearing at an art opening in NY to meet Catherine, and each past boyfriend of hers came by to shake my wet hand. Each one looked at me and stifled a gasp, a laugh, a crack — I gripped her elbow, staring at her ex's tie clip, and said, “Never make me shake hands. If we don't make it, don't you ever introduce me. You hear me? I don't want to be anybody's former anybody. Please, don't make me shake a damn hand. I might not give it back.” Giving her some credit, I wasn't easy to be with.