Philipp Meyer - American Rust

“How long do you think—” Poe said, but Harris closed the door on him.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he heard Harris tell him. He heard other doors slamming after that.

He had no coat and there seemed to be a vent blowing cold air directly onto him, not to mention there was a puddle from the leaking toilet; water covered most of the floor. Here he was, you didn't think they could do this to you — put you in a locked room — but they could. There was no way around it. It was a tragedy of life. In fact that was how he'd felt the first time they'd locked him up, that there had been no way around it, but in hindsight that hadn't been true. It wasn't true now, either. It was his own choices. They never felt like choices while he was making them, but nonetheless they were. It was nice to think it was a vast conspiracy of others but the truth was something different.

The last time he was locked up it was the boy from Donora. Big, though not quite as big as Poe, and aside from the pimples all over his face and neck there had been nothing wrong with him. A B student, people said. But when Poe got through with him it was different. He remembered holding the boy down, they were both bleeding some, girls watching. They were in a dirt parking lot at night and it was very quiet, everyone had stopped talking to watch them, there was no one even cheering them on, just the sound of their heavy breathing and grunting. The boy was pinned and Poe knew he should not let the boy up. Stay down, he whispered, but he knew the boy wouldn't, he could tell the boy did not want to lose, the boy did not have it in him to lose. It would be the downfall of both of them. Stay down, he said again, quietly into the boy's ear, but he had to let him up, they couldn't lie there all night. He should have choked him out, it would have been for the boy's own good, but others would have gotten involved if he'd done that. It was no win either way, and finally he had to let the boy up, though he knew what would happen. Obviously he did not know exactly what would happen, he only knew the situation would not improve.

The boy went to his car and came back and everyone stepped away. He had a knife, a military bayonet you might buy at a gun show, and the crowd made way for Poe to retreat but Poe had stood his ground, it would have been easy to walk away, the kid was insane at losing the fight, he was not really going to use the bayonet, he was the type who would go off to college, he was embarrassed, was all.

But Poe had stood his ground. Because his fire was going. Because he'd won and now he didn't want to lose. He had stood there and no one knew what to do, not him, not the boy and then Vincent Lewis had put a bat in Poe's hand, a child's bat from Little League it was light and short, a good weapon. It was something out of gladiator times, knife versus club. Neither of them really wanting to do it, it was only because of all the people. The older you got the more serious things became. Your margins for fuckup disappeared. First there was the boy from Donora and now the Swede. It was getting worse. He wondered what would come next. Both times he should have known better but he hadn't. The next time Christ it would be someone he loved, his mother, or Lee, it would be something unthinkable.

As for the boy from Donora, Poe had asked after him several times but he was not okay. He couldn't even work a cash register, couldn't keep the numbers straight on account of Poe hitting him with the bat. He hit him and the boy went down in the dirt and then he didn't know, he'd hit him once more in the head. Because he was still holding on to that bayonet. And yet that was why the assault charge — the second hit, they were teaching him a lesson. But you didn't learn it, he thought. You did not learn that lesson.

He was always trying to see what he could get away with — that was why a man was dead. He was always trying to game it. See how far he could push. That was in the bloodstream and why he ever thought he'd escape it, who the fuck knew? Hiram Poe, his grandfather, the Valley's biggest poacher, had shot himself, no one knew why, because he was a crazy old fuck is how Poe's father put it. Don't worry, you ain't like him, is what his father told him, but Poe hadn't even been wondering. It hadn't even occurred to him that he was anything like batshit old Grandpa. Now, though. Now things were going downhill.

His father had a talent for making things go his way, he'd worked on the towboats when Poe was younger, then gotten fired because he hadn't lashed the barges right and a storm came up and a fucking barge full of coal went floating off down the Mon, nearly causing a wreck. But still that weaselly old fucker, weaselly Virgil had managed to come out on top, something had happened to him on the boats, he jammed his back somehow, so he managed to collect a little disability from it, claimed he had something permanently wrong with his back when really it was fine. He still lost his job but now he got a permanent paycheck from it. He was always moving around, he'd come into town once in a while for a piece of pussy, mostly from young girls, but occasionally from Poe's mother. It was not something Poe liked to think about, his mom in that position, but it was true, you did not have the luxury of thinking otherwise when you lived in a trailer. As for Virgil, he worked odd jobs once in a while, sat in the bars reading books so the girls would believe he was a great thinker, a rebel, when really he was just a lazy bastard who didn't give two shits for anyone. Probably holding the books upside down. Put his mind up against someone like Lee or Isaac, they'd crush him.

He looked around — outside, it had already gotten dark. His cell was big for a jail cell, maybe ten by twenty feet, but the floor was soaking wet. And now that no light was coming in from the outside, it was even darker — the light fixture in the hallway did a poor job — you would have gotten eyestrain if you'd tried to read. He had nothing to read anyway. He tried to keep his mind moving so the boredom wouldn't set in, the death spiral. What got old Hiram — sit around long enough with nothing to think about eventually your mind locks into it — fact that this here, your breathing, is a temporary situation, and why bother pretending otherwise.

Hiram had got what was coming and he was not sorry Hiram was gone. When Poe was seven, he and his father and old Hiram had been sitting in a deer blind, and Poe had fallen asleep, and when he woke up there were deer in front of the blind, and he'd said look, a deer, and spooked them all, including a big twelve- pointer, and Hiram had missed his shot. Later he'd heard his father saying you ain't mad, are ya? He's just a kid. But Hiram was mad — at a small boy on his first hunting trip. Virgil had knocked Poe around plenty, but once, when Virgil wasn't around, Hiram had done it too. The thing is it was not Hiram's fault, or Virgil's, it was in the blood and it was the fault of someone way back before either of them. God, maybe.

He stood up and banged on the cell door until his hand hurt, knowing the whole time no one would come. When he got bored with that he stood looking out the window, there were things moving but he couldn't tell what, a bird, a truck, a person walking. He himself was not going anywhere and he never had been. As for college the whole idea was a joke, if there was one thing he was bad at, one thing he'd never been good at in his life it was book learning. Let him do it with his hands no problem, rejet a carburetor, gut a deer, he was good at those things but stick him in a room with chairs and desks and he blanked out. He couldn't see the importance. He couldn't distinguish between what was important to know and what wasn't, he remembered the wrong things. It had always been that way.