Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

“That’s stupid,” I said. “Why do you think he was on the juice?”

“Well, besides the needle marks on his legs, he—”

“Fuck off,” I said, grabbing my coat. Then I called a taxi and went back to the gym and did stiff-legged dead lifts until I passed out. When I woke up the next morning, I was curled up on the platform with shit in my pants.

After that night, nobody came to the gym anymore, not even Little Ralph, but half the town came to Sammy’s funeral. I buried my boy and went back to my routine, wiping down the equipment every day, sweeping the floor, plodding through my workouts. But I kept losing focus; one morning I woke up hanging upside down from the power rack like a bat, all the mirrors covered with old newspapers. A few nights later, I binged on two boxes of candy bars I found stashed under Sammy’s cot, then turned around and overdosed on a box of laxatives. The next day I tacked a CLOSED sign to the front door and scattered a box of nails in the parking lot.

A few weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon in early February, the radio started issuing reports about a cold front moving in, warning everyone to stay home. As I listened to predictions about record lows, my head suddenly became as clear as a zip-lock baggie. I pulled on some old sweats, ate some aspirin. After sticking a stack of Sammy’s Megadeth CDs in the stereo and cranking it up, I just started doing set after set after fucking set. I pumped iron for eight hours straight, a personal best. Then around 2 AM, I took a scorching shower, shaved off all my body hair and greased myself down.

The town was dead when I pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot. Beer cans and hamburger wrappers were frozen to the ground. The sign on the bank said two degrees. Little beads of ice were falling out of the sky, and the Christmas lights still hanging in Miller’s store popped on and off in the dark windows. I got out of the car and began taking off my clothes. After stripping down to nothing, I stepped over to the spot on the sidewalk where Sammy had fallen.

I started off with some basics, going through them slowly, trying to warm up. Then I went into some secret stuff that I’d been working on for years, shit I was going to show Sammy when he was good enough. The wind cut across my naked body like a meat slicer. Staring across at the bank sign, I kept sucking the icy air and praying for the discipline to hold each pose perfectly. The temperature finally bottomed out at minus thirty-six degrees. My muscles ground against each other like ice floes in the cold silence.

As morning approached, I lifted my frozen arms for one more shot and a loud crack shook the entire valley. A white light exploded in my head and my body shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Then I blew like flakes of dirty snow down the gray, empty street.

STANDING IN HIS UNDERWEAR IN FRONT OF THE FADED pink duplex that he and Geraldine rented, Del came out of a blackout while taking a leak in the dead August grass. That was the bad thing about coming to: one minute he was like some brainless carp happily munching shit on the bottom of Paint Creek, then pop , a flash of light and he was floundering around on dry land again, caught in the middle of another embarrassing fuckup. Lately it seemed to happen every time he got loaded. “Jesus,” he said to himself. “Well, at least it ain’t the goddamn broom closet.” The last time, he’d cut loose in the spoon drawer in the middle of the night after passing out at Geraldine’s birthday party. They had been eating with plastic forks ever since.

Del didn’t realize that it was still daylight outside until he looked up into the shocked eyes of the two old ladies standing on the sidewalk staring at him. They were close enough to spit on. One of them, tall and thin with a silver beehive hairdo, began gasping for air, her mouth popping open like the trunk of a car, her false teeth ready to leap out and clatter down the street like in some old-time cartoon. The other woman, round and squat, wore a shiny red jogging suit that made her look like a fat tomato. Her pancake makeup was beginning to melt in the heat, and he watched in hungover awe as part of her greasy face suddenly broke loose and slid down her neck just as she started pounding on the back of her wheezing friend. Turning away from them, he lurched toward the porch, warm piss dribbling on his bare feet. And just like that, Del was home.

Geraldine was hiding behind the front door with Veena, their baby, propped on her hip, peering out at her husband through the thin, smoke-stained curtain. She stood there all the time, sucking on menthol cigarettes and watching the street for possible assailants. Six months ago, her old doctor at the Henry J. Hamilton Rehabilitation Center had put her back on all her medications after somebody disguised in a paper bag tried to strangle her in front of the Tobacco Friendly. Though she described the sack perfectly, even drew a picture of it down at the station, the cops never found a single suspect. Nowadays, she wouldn’t even stick her hand out the door to check the mailbox.

“I shoulda stayed at the Henry J!” Geraldine cried to Del on the way home from the police station right after the attack. She was in the backseat, frantically trying to burrow into the floorboards with her hands.

“Hey, Geri, you’re the one that was beggin’ to get out of that damn nuthouse,” Del yelled back at her. “You’re the one wanted to get married,” he pointed out for the hundredth time. He’d first met Geraldine when she was living in the group home over on Fourth Street. Back then she did sex in public places, carried cold fish sticks in her purse the way other people pack chewing gum, handing them out to strangers like precious gifts. Then Del had gotten her pregnant, and in one brave, ecstatic moment, Geraldine flushed all her pills. The next day, she filled out a job application for Del at the plastics factory, conjured up an old wedding ring out of thin air. Now he was stuck.

Del shoved the door open, and Geraldine listed to one side to let him pass. She’d never lost the weight from the baby. “What the hell?” she said. “The whole friggin’ neighborhood’s watching us, for Christ’s sakes.” Sickly dark circles surrounded her cloudy eyes like little moats. Sometimes Del envied her; he couldn’t get a doctor within fifty miles of Meade, Ohio, to put him on anything.

“I musta been sleepwalkin’,” Del mumbled. Then he staggered on and flopped down on the itchy plaid couch. Guns N’ Roses was blasting away in the apartment upstairs. The speed-freak nurses from the VA hospital were starting early today. First, they’d get cranked up at home, then go out trolling for men in the bars uptown. Every time they got lucky, Del stared at the ceiling and listened to the squeaking beds above him, half expecting the entire orgy to crash down on his head any second. On those nights, he held his dick in his hand like a holy cross, praying for their hearts to burst into pieces so that he could get some sleep.

He was standing in a green pasture pitching a perfect ringer when Geraldine shook him awake. “Get your ass up,” she ordered. “It’s your turn to babysit.”

Geraldine was still pissed because Del had slipped out that morning while she was in the shower. It was his day off, and they were supposed to attempt a trip to the Columbus Zoo, but at the last minute he decided to flee. He couldn’t stand the thought of dealing with Geraldine’s panic attacks all the way up Route 23. Her doctor had suggested the trip weeks ago, but she’d kept putting it off, hoping the medication would eventually make the outside world a friendlier place to visit.

Instead Del had driven out to Knockemstiff that morning in the beat-up Cavalier, then spent the better part of the day pitching horseshoes with some of his worthless cousins. “It’s cleaner than the last batch,” Porter assured him, handing him a joint laced with angel dust. Del hated PCP; it seemed like the gods fucked with him every time he smoked the shit. And sure enough, by the time he headed back to town, some bearded bastard with bad teeth wrapped in a piece of outdoor carpet was popping on and off in the rearview mirror like a beer sign, talking crazy shit about Del’s old high school.