Guy Vanderhaeghe - Man Descending

“Gene!”

“Well for chrissakes, relax!”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t swear.”

“Who’s swearing?”

“Don’t snag my nylons, Gene. Gene, what in the world are you… Gene!”

“Some people don’t know when they’re having a good time,” says Doreen. I think she was a little pissed I hadn’t parked and give her some action. But Lord knows what might’ve happened to Nancy if I’d done that.

Then, all of a sudden, Nancy calls out, sounding what you’d call desperate, “Hey, everybody, who wants a Coke!”

“Nobody wants a Coke,” mumbles Gene, sort of through his teeth.

“Well, maybe we could go some place?” Meaning somewhere well-lit where this octopus will lay off for five seconds.

“I’ll take you some place,” Gene mutters. “You want to go somewhere, we’ll go to Zipper’s. Hey Billy, let’s take them to Zipper’s.”

“I don’t know, Gene…”

The way I said that perked Doreen up right away. As far as she was concerned, anything was better than driving around with a dope, looking at a snowstorm. “Hey,” she hollers, “that sounds like fun!” Fun like a mental farm.

That clinched it though. “Sure,” says Gene, “we’ll check out Zipper’s.”

What could I say?

Don’t get me wrong. Like everybody else I go to Zipper’s and do stuff you can’t do any place else in town. That’s not it. But I wouldn’t take anybody nice there on purpose. And I’m not trying to say that Zipper and his mother are bad people neither. It’s just that so many shitty things have happened to those two that they’ve become kind of unpredictable. If you aren’t used to that it can seem pretty weird.

I mean, look at Zipper. This guy is a not entirely normal human being who tries to tattoo himself with geometry dividers and India ink. He has this home poke on his arm which he claims is an American bald eagle but looks like a demented turkey or something. He did it himself, and the worst is he doesn’t know how homely that bird is. The dumb prick shows it to people to admire.

Also, I should say a year ago he quits school to teach himself to be a drummer. That’s all. He doesn’t get a job or nothing, just sits at home and drums, and his mother, who’s a widow and doesn’t know any better, lets him. I guess that that’s not any big surprise. She’s a pretty hopeless drunk who’s been taking her orders from Zipper since he was six. That’s when his old man got electrocuted out at the mine.

Still, I’m not saying that the way Zipper is is entirely his fault. Though he can be a real creep all right. Like once when he was about ten years old Momma Zipper gets a jag on and passes out naked in the bedroom, and he lets any of his friends look at his mother with no clothes on for chrissakes, if they pay him a dime. His own mother, mind you.

But in his defence I’d say he’s seen a lot of “uncles” come and go in his time, some of which figured they’d make like the man of the house and tune him in. For a while there when he was eleven, twelve maybe, half the time he was coming to school with a black eye.

Now you take Gene, he figures Zipper’s house is heaven on earth. No rules. Gene figures that’s the way life ought to be. No rules. Of course, nothing’s entirely free. At Zipper’s you got to bring a bottle or a case of beer and give Mrs. Zipper a few snorts, then everything is hunky-dory. Gene had a bottle of Five Star stashed under the back seat for the big Christmas Dance, so we were okay in that department.

But that night the lady of the house didn’t seem to be around, or mobile anyway. Zipper himself came to the door, sweating like a pig in a filthy T-shirt. He’d been drumming along to the radio.

“What do you guys want?” says Zipper.

Gene holds up the bottle. “Party time.”

“I’m practising,” says Zipper.

“So you’re practising. What’s that to us?”

“My old lady’s sleeping on the sofa,” says Zipper, opening the door wide. “You want to fuck around here you do it in the basement.” Which means his old lady’d passed out. Nobody sleeps through Zipper on the drums.

“Gene.” Nancy was looking a bit shy, believe me.

My brother didn’t let on he’d even heard her. “Do I look particular? You know me, Zip.”

Zipper looked like maybe he had to think about that one. To tell the truth, he didn’t seem quite all there. At last he says, “Sure. Sure, I know you. Keep a cool tool.” And then, just like that, he wanders off to his drums, and leaves us standing there.

Gene laughs and shakes his head. “What a meatball.”

It makes me feel empty lots of times when I see Zipper. He’s so skinny and yellow and his eyes are always weepy-looking. They say there’s something gone wrong with his kidneys from all the gas and glue he sniffed when he was in elementary school.

Boy, he loves his drums though. Zipper’s really what you’d call dedicated. The sad thing is that the poor guy’s got no talent. He just makes a big fucking racket and he don’t know any better. You see, Zipper really thinks he’s going to make himself somebody with those drums, he really does. Who’d tell him any different?

Gene found some dirty coffee cups in the kitchen sink and started rinsing them out. While he did that I watched Nancy Williams. She hadn’t taken her coat off, in fact she was hugging it tight to her chest like she figured somebody was going to tear it off of her. I hadn’t noticed before she had on a little bit of lipstick. But now her face had gone so pale it made her mouth look bright and red and pinched like somebody had just slapped it, hard.

Zipper commenced slamming away just as the four of us got into the basement. Down there it sounded as if we were right inside a great big drum and Zipper was beating the skin directly over our heads.

And boy, did it stink in that place. Like the sewer had maybe backed up. But then there were piles of dirty laundry humped up on the floor all around an old wringer washing machine, so that could’ve been the smell too.

It was cold and sour down there and we had nothing to sit on but a couple of lawn chairs and a chesterfield that was all split and stained with what I think was you know what. Nancy looked like she wished she had a newspaper to spread out over it before she sat down. As I said before, you shouldn’t never take anybody nice to Zipper’s.

Gene poured rye into the coffee mugs he’d washed out and passed them around. Nancy didn’t want hers. “No thank you,” she told him.

“You’re embarrassing me, Nancy,” says Doreen. The way my date was sitting in the lawn chair beside me in her make-do mini I knew why Gene was all scrunched down on that wrecked chesterfield.

“You know I don’t drink, Doreen.” Let me explain that when Nancy said that it didn’t sound snotty. Just quiet and well-mannered like when a polite person passes up the parsnips. Nobody in their right minds holds it against them.

“You don’t do much, do you?” That was Gene’s two bits’ worth.

“I’ll say,” chips in Doreen.

Nancy doesn’t answer. I could hear old Zipper crashing and banging away like a madman upstairs.

“You don’t do much, do you?” Gene’s much louder this time.

“I suppose not.” I can barely hear her answer because her head’s down. She’s checking out the backs of her hands.

“Somebody in your position ought to try harder,” Doreen pipes up. “You don’t make yourself too popular when you go spoiling parties.”

Gene shoves the coffee mug at Nancy again. “Have a drink.”

She won’t take it. Principles.

“Have a drink!”