Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

…..

“ITHINK YOU WAITED TOO LONG,” SHARON SAID AS THEY drove slowly past the dark Tecumseh Lounge. It was the last dive her mother had worked in. The owner still had a photograph of Big Bessie on the wall behind the cash register. Twice, she and Aunt Joan had gotten lucky there.

“Damn, I was hoping we’d beat last call,” Aunt Joan said. “The drunks, they’re the easiest.” She pulled the car over at the edge of the empty parking lot and hunted in her purse for a fresh pack of cigarettes. The rain, which had practically stopped on the long drive into town, started up again. Sharon wondered if Dean had found his way back inside the house. “Oh, well,” Aunt Joan sighed. “What about we go get some doughnuts? I always got a sweet tooth, don’t you?”

Besides the cross-eyed waitress, there was only one other person in the Crispie Creme, a wasted-looking young man in a booth near the back who seemed to be talking to himself. As they stood waiting for their order at the glass counter, Aunt Joan whispered that he was the same guy who’d been in there the last time they’d come to town. “Remember?” she said. “He was with some guy had a split-looking mouth.”

“Maybe,” Sharon said.

“He looks lonely.”

The man glanced up from his cup, then squinted at them in the bright fluorescent lighting. He stuck out his coffee-stained tongue. “You’re kidding, right?” Sharon said.

“What do you mean?”

“Christ, Aunt Joan, he looks like a friggin’ serial killer.”

“He don’t look no worse than the other ones, Sharon. Besides, I don’t figure we’re gonna find any movie stars out this late.” She counted out the exact change for the silent waitress. “C’mon, let’s sit.”

“Goddamn it,” Sharon muttered under her breath. She had hoped maybe her aunt would forget about finding one tonight. With their hot chocolates and the box of doughnuts, they sat down in a booth across from the man. He nodded and batted his bloodshot eyes, showed them a mouthful of yellow teeth. Aunt Joan gave him a shy smile, then kicked Sharon’s shin until her niece finally asked the man to sit with them.

He told them his name was Jimmy as he eagerly slid into the booth next to Sharon. His greasy hair hung down in his eyes and a patchy beard covered his skinny neck. Faded blue letters decorated the knuckles of each hand. Aunt Joan did most of the talking, asking him bullshit questions about his family origins, bitching about the rainy weather. Sharon knew she was sizing him up, trying to decide if he might be a man she wouldn’t mind waking up next to in the morning. For his part, Jimmy just kept repeating the same phrases over and over; “Cool” and “Party time” seemed to be the only words he knew. It was obvious to Sharon that he didn’t have a brain in his head. Her aunt would think he was perfect.

Aunt Joan finally nodded at Sharon and excused herself. They watched her walk back to the restroom, and Sharon hoped to God that she’d never waddle like that. Jimmy scooted up against her and suggested that they dump the old cow, but Sharon ignored him. By the time Aunt Joan returned, he had his arm wrapped around her niece, his tongue stuck in her ear. Five minutes later, they were all getting into the car. “You two go ahead and sit in the back,” Aunt Joan said. “I’ll handle the driving.”

As soon as they backed out of the parking lot, Jimmy pulled a plastic bag and a spray can from his coat pocket. “Party time,” he said again, nudging Sharon with his elbow. She watched him fill the bag with spray, then stick his face in it and inhale deeply several times. Whatever it was smelled like ether and she rolled her window down despite the rain. He finally let the can drop to the floor and leaned back in the seat. A glob of spit dripped off his dirty beard. His eyes became as vacant as a dead TV. Sharon looked up and saw her aunt smiling at her in the rearview mirror.

Whatever he sniffed didn’t last long, and as soon as Jimmy came out of his fog, Aunt Joan leaned across the seat and opened the glove box. She took out a pint of whiskey, made a big deal out of twisting the cap off and pretending to take a hit. At the last red light in Meade, she handed the bottle back to him. He took a drink and offered it to Sharon. She shook her head, told him she’d already drank too much hot chocolate. He and Aunt Joan passed the bottle back and forth several times, and every time Jimmy took another drink, he pushed his hand farther down inside Sharon’s sweatpants. Finally Aunt Joan said, “Sharon, I’ll bet your boyfriend can’t kill the rest of that bottle.”

Jimmy held the pint up and looked at it. “Lady, you don’t know ol’ Jimmy very well, do you?” he said. As he raised the bottle to his mouth, Sharon saw her aunt reach over and turn the heater on high. Warm air filled the car. When he finished chugging, Jimmy smacked his lips and said, “I could do that all night long.” Then he slipped his tongue in Sharon’s ear again. Just as she began to tingle a little bit, his hand quit moving inside her pants. She jerked it out and he fell back against the door, mumbling something about fat girls being tight.

“Okay,” Sharon said as she wiped spit out of her ear. “Stop the car.”

“What’s wrong?” Aunt Joan flipped on her turn signal, and began slowing down.

“Ain’t nothing wrong,” Sharon said. “But I’m not sitting back here all the way home. He smells like a medicine cabinet.”

Easing the car over to the side of the highway, Aunt Joan asked, “What was that stuff anyway?”

Sharon felt around on the floorboards until she found the can. She held it up to the light from a passing car. “Bactine,” she said. “Yeah, Aunt Joan, you sure know how to pick ’em.”

“Throw it out. They say that stuff will rot your brain sniffing it like that.”

“It’s already too late for this one,” Sharon said as she got in the front seat and slammed the door shut. “Mr. Party Time. Ha. He’s a pig.”

Aunt Joan laughed. “Oh, don’t talk about my new man like that. He might end up being a keeper.” A semi blew past them just before Aunt Joan pulled the big car back onto the highway.

“It ain’t funny,” Sharon shouted. “He had his hand clear up inside me.”

“Eat one of those doughnuts.”

“I don’t want no doughnut. I just want to go home.”

“Honey, this is the last time, I promise,” Aunt Joan said.

Sharon lit a cigarette just as the car engine started making a hammering sound. The New Yorker had been practically new when Aunt Joan’s daddy gave it to her three years ago, but she never took care of anything. John Grubb had traded his pickup in on the car the same day the doctors told him that his diabetes had scored another victory. Your legs this time, they had told him. He’d already lost most of his toes. On the way out of town with the new car, he stopped at Jack’s Hardware and bought a ten-gallon cowboy hat and a.45 pistol that came with a fancy shoulder holster. Then he drove back to the farmhouse he shared with his youngest daughter and wired a cow’s skull to the front grille of the car. For the next two months, he drove around the county drinking whiskey and eating bags of hardtack candy and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis cassettes. Sharon knew the story by heart; her aunt told it every time the car broke down.

They were halfway home when Aunt Joan tapped Sharon on the leg and said, “Honey, check on that boy, will you?”

Sharon groaned and twisted around in her seat. Though it was dark in the car, she thought she could see one of Jimmy’s eyes open, like a shiny coin, staring up at her. Getting up on her knees, she leaned over the front seat and lit her cigarette lighter. Both of his eyes flickered. She’d never seen that before. “What was in that bottle?” she said.