Amelia Gray - Gutshot - Stories

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This morning I bought a banana and left it on the counter because I didn’t like the look of it. I can’t even remember where I was at the time, if you can believe it.

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You’re such a pretty skeptic.

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I’m afraid he’ll say he doesn’t think of anything at all and then that will make two of us.

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I wonder about janitors. If when they close up shop, they go home and clean their own homes. I figure if I was a janitor I would pop a squat on the floor and make a watery BM every now and again to keep myself humble.

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What do you do to keep yourself humble? You’ll have to remind me because I can’t think of a goddammed thing.

You are one man standing barefoot in a grocery store. You regard rows of snack-cake cartons stacked like bricks when your mind begins to go. You knew it in your heart: Your heart is a wall of the same brick repeated. You’re standing barefoot because you put your slippers into the coffee bulk bin where they make like rabbit ears and listen up.

At home, you call your mom and her voice reminds you of a pancake you dropped on the floor that morning. Because you have no dog, you got on your hands and knees and ate that pancake up off the floor. You licked your lips and the floor and took a nap in your nap spot.

You tell your mom you don’t remember her wearing a lot of denim. Your mom corrects you and says she did wear more denim than you remember. She says, Your father worked in denim. Your crib was made of denim. He covered it for your safety. Every problem can be traced to attention or its lack. As your mom goes on you watch a video that features a woman facing the camera and talking about yoga, and her nipples straining her costume are themselves talking in a sea tone of the responsibility of owning animals.

As you watch the video for the tenth time you work your way down the numbers in your Casual Encounters file but each call receives no answer. You try one number again and again until a bird picks up and tells you to fuck-right-off, fuck-right-off. Your heart is a wall of the same brick repeated.

A man returns your call and asks if you’re the guy who wants a visit. Says he knows a guy, knows a lot of guys actually and some women, that every one of them knows a thing or two about bricks and they’re all coming over.

You have been surrounded all your life by people concerned for your health. Men build scaffolding to protect your stupid skull. Cars stop and allow you to cross. Every problem in the world can be traced to attention or its lack.

The man arrives at your door wearing some serious denim. You carry a folding chair and follow him down the steps to the alley. He has assembled a crowd. He produces an awl and taps it around the circumference of your neck. Checking out, he says. I’ve had my days and yours aren’t my business.

You can’t feel it. The man tells the crowd That’s all, folks. He angles it in the nape of your neck. He is a magician. You smile for the crowd. Your heart’s a wall. Your heart is a wall.

Mom calls, but the man is tapping his awl beside your ear and you can only hear her saying denim denim denim, denim denim. Denim denim. Den-den-denim-denim. Denim. Den-den. Denim-um. Denum. Denumm. Den-den-den-den. Um. Umm. Um-um.

Your collarbone crk-crks and is liberated. The man in denm is whistlin “Home on the Range.” Word lip saside. Yu make a momont to fleck on the lean of the nalley, the pn sponch & yr hart it’s a wallv th sambrick repeetd, th snik-snik, th sm-brk, rpt-rpt-rpt.

The woman checked her mail every afternoon. One day, she found a card from her friend. The card, pale green and decorated with filigrees and flowers, was lovely. Inside, the woman’s friend had written a sweet note, thanking the woman for a baby-shower gift she had sent from a catalog.

“Such a beautiful card,” said the woman, turning it over. She wanted to show her appreciation for the sentiment presented and the effort implied, given that her friend was quite pregnant and still thought to sit down and write a heartfelt note in a darling card.

The woman sat down at her desk and opened the drawer, extracting a few options. One card was festive, with holly sprigs and a touch of glitter. Another featured a nautical stripe and a jaunty anchor. The woman, feeling the season appropriate, chose the first. She picked a fresh pen and wrote: “Thank you for your kind thank-you card. I appreciate so much that you considered our friendship this month, and I so look forward to meeting the new addition to your family. All my love.”

She signed her name, addressed and stamped an envelope, slipped the card inside, and dropped it in the mail.

Some days passed, and the woman received another letter. Inside its sturdy envelope, the cream-colored card was embossed with her friend’s name on the front and inside that, with the woman’s name. The woman gasped with delight and sat down in her office to read: “Thank you, my dear, for the thoughtful thank-you card in response to my thank-you card. It pleased me greatly to see your response, as I count you among my most polite friends. Yours.”

Such a thoughtful gesture! She immediately picked a card from her drawer; this one was sunny yellow, with four butterflies in a line. Inside, she wrote: “Thank you for your thank-you card recognizing my thank-you card for your thank-you card. We are truly friends.”

This returned sentiment seemed slightly less personal and the woman panicked before remembering the small craft supply she kept for her children to play with when she worked late. She uncapped a tube of silver glitter and deposited a healthy quarter cup into the envelope before inserting the card. She dropped it in the mail and went to bed.

Eight days later, a brown paper package arrived. The woman took it up to her room. Inside, she found a handful of bright cherry bombs and a decorative plate, on which her friend had painted the words THANK YOU. The woman lit a cherry bomb, threw it into her bathtub, and watched it crack merrily about, thinking of her friend’s thoughtful nature.

The woman spent the afternoon assembling supplies to make a chocolate cake. She waited patiently for it to cool before she piped raspberry cream between the layers and at the base. She found a box that would fit the cake and tore out the pages of five of her favorite books, running them through the shredder to make a nest for the cake to travel on. Discovering she was out of pastry cream, she wrote THANKS on an empty paper towel roll and affixed it to the frosting. By the time the postman picked it up the next morning, a fluid had condensed, leaving a sticky ring on the mailroom floor.

She began to have trouble sleeping. A postal tube arrived and she opened it to release eight disoriented white mice. They tumbled out in a line and scrambled for safety. She gave them water and sliced up an apple but was confused by their presence until later that evening when, save for one, they seized and made tiny bowel movements that respectively produced alphabet beads T H A N K O and U. The last mouse was uncomfortably constipated in a life-threatening way until she took him to the vet and had the Y extracted at the expense of forty-five dollars.

A fever gripped the woman and she was bound to her bed for a week. When she could walk again, she set immediately to work. She mixed industrial buckets of yellow lye, loaded them up after dark, and drove to the park, which featured swings for children and a community garden and a broad green lawn.

In the morning she set up an old VCR to record the news and drank coffee while she rebandaged her chemical burns. They came in live from the grassy field. There was a clip of the landscape men being piled into the back of a police truck, one of them crying. There was a good live shot of the THANKS on the grass still smoking comically from burned patches. There was talk of reevaluating local law enforcement, of adding cameras. She popped the tape in the mail that afternoon.