Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

So one bitterly cold morning in November, we found ourselves driving down the highway on a trip we’d made a hundred times, to sell the fluids from her body. The exhaust system on the Pinto was shot, and because carbon monoxide kept spewing up through the rotten holes in the floorboards, we had to roll the windows down to keep from getting gassed. Marshall was sitting in the backseat quiet as a snail and all snotty from a cold, and I shucked off my coat and threw it to him. Yesterday’s cereal crud was still caked to his face like dry-wall mud, and the new clothes that Dee had bought him last week were already filthy.

The damp, gray sky covered southern Ohio like the skin of a corpse. The landscape was a seemingly endless row of squat metal buildings full of cheap junk for sale: carpet remnants, used furniture, country crafts. Because Dee had insisted that I do the driving, I’d held off on my morning Oxys, and was feeling a little more on edge than usual. But still, the cold air blowing through the windows was refreshing after a month spent penned up in the trailer. As I drove, I even began to look around for businesses that might be suitable candidates for burglary.

Then Dee started talking her bullshit, stuff about rich celebrities and their private lives. A stranger would have thought she knew these people personally, the way she described their wants and desires. I shut her out, started thinking about the two 80s I’d stashed in the dash for an emergency. “Poor Brad,” she said wistfully.

I thought she was commenting on my cousin’s bad luck; he’d been arrested again for stealing hubcaps. “Shoot, he’ll be out in three months,” I said. “That bag biter can do that standing on his head.”

“Brad Pitt, you idiot,” Dee said.

“Fuck him.”

“Oh, believe you me, mister, if I ever got the chance.”

“Ha, that’s a good one. You hear that, Marshall? Shit, you and a fuckin’ donkey maybe.”

“Or Tex,” she said, sticking her big round face out at me. “What about Tex, you asshole? Maybe you could even get him ready for me.”

“You mention that bastard’s name again, I’ll knock your teeth out,” I said, regretting again that I’d ever told her about the offer of two grand. And though it was true that Tex had driven me to the hospital that night instead of smashing in my head, he’d gone on to ruin my reputation, told around that I’d begged for my life that night behind the drugstore, that I’d offered to suck him off in exchange for mercy. Every day I prayed for his capture.

We were stopped at a red light right outside of Portsmouth when a silver Lexus pulled up beside us. Glancing over, I was startled by the bold, sparkling eyes of the most stunning woman I’d ever seen. She was checking us out, laughing into her cell phone. Every inch of her radiated money and happiness and fine genes. Though there had once been a time when I would have yelled over and asked her to fuck, now all I felt was shame that she’d had to look at me at all. My hair was uncombed and greasy, my teeth coated with yellow scum, my tattoos meaningless and outdated. I turned my head and waited for the light to change.

As the Lexus sped on down the street, I let out the slippery clutch on the Pinto and started cramping. Because of the opiates, I seldom ate anything but candy bars and ice cream, but that morning Dee had insisted on stopping at Mickey D’s for breakfast. I’d poisoned myself with sausage gravy and biscuits and Egg McMuffins and a chocolate shake. By the time we got downtown, I knew I couldn’t hold it. “Jesus Christ, stop somewhere,” Dee said. But I couldn’t face the public now. All I could see was that beautiful woman in the fancy car turning her nose up at me.

Though I fought it, tensing my muscles and squeezing the steering wheel with both hands, the pains kept getting worse. Desperate, I turned down an alley and saw a Dumpster behind an old brick building. I stomped the parking brake and jumped out. Diving behind the metal container, I jerked my pants down and cut loose. For a second, the relief was better than any drug, but then I heard tires crunching in the gravel behind me. Looking around, I saw a police car approaching slowly. I was trapped, my skinny ass shining at the two officers inside. There was no way I could stop — the stuff was pouring out of me like pancake batter. I gave a little wave, cursing them under my breath.

As the two cops got out of the cruiser, I tried to stand, but another wave of cramps forced me down into a squat again. I saw shit splatter on my jeans, inside and out. “What the hell we got here, Larry?” one of the cops said, an older man with a red nose and a thick mustache. He pulled a black club out of a holster attached to his belt.

Foul watery slime squirted from me again, and I lowered my head. “I ain’t sure, Dave,” the other cop said, a young man with sharp features, muscles sticking out of his shirtsleeves. “The only thing that I ever see doing that in public is a dog.” He kicked some loose gravel at me. “Are you a dog, you dirty bastard?” he asked me.

“No,” I managed to say.

“Check him out, Larry,” the older cop said with a chuckle. “I’ll cover you.”

“Fuck, I ain’t touching that skanky bastard,” the younger cop said. “He’s probably got the AIDS or something.”

They stood there for a minute watching me, then the older cop said, “Dog, where in the hell do you think you are?”

“Portsmouth,” I said.

“Stand up when he’s talking to you,” the younger cop ordered.

“I can’t,” I groaned. “I’m still sick.”

Then he pointed his gun at me. “I said to stand up, motherfucker.”

I stood up, holding my pants out of the mess with my hands. “Put your hands in the air,” the older cop said. I bit my lip, then raised my hands and let my jeans drop to the ground.

“Now, I want you to march in place, like you’re in my army,” the younger cop said, nudging his partner with his elbow. “You know how to do that, dog?” They both stepped back. I raised one knee, then lowered it and pressed my jeans down into the spreading puddle. As I lifted the other leg, I looked over and saw Dee scoot behind the wheel, a blank look on her face. Marshall had covered his head with my coat. If I could have wrestled a gun from one of the cops, I gladly would have killed us all at that moment.

“Please, officers,” I said, my voice shaking. “I don’t want no trouble. I got my family in the car.”

The older cop looked over at the Pinto. “Go call in the plate,” he told his partner. Then, as the younger cop walked back to the cruiser, he asked me, “Where you from, dog?”

“Meade,” I answered. “Can I pull my pants back up now?”

“Not yet,” he said.

We stood in the cold until the other cop came back and said the car was clean. “All right, go the fuck back where you come from,” the older cop said.

“Yeah, and you better think twice before you take a shit in Portsmouth again,” said the muscled one. Then they both busted a gut as they walked to the cruiser.

I pulled my pants up and watched them back down the alley, then I started to get in the car. “You’re not getting in here like that,” Dee said. I looked around, pulled a flattened cardboard box out of the Dumpster and laid it on the passenger seat. “Oh, God,” she said when I slid in and slammed the door shut. “You should kill yourself.” My jeans and hands were pasted with shit.

Jerking open the glove box, I fumbled around for the Oxy I’d brought with me. “It’ll be all right,” I said as I chewed the tablets up, and tried to calm down.

“Oh, Marshall, did you hear that?” Dee said sarcastically. “Daddy says everything is going to be just fine and fuckin’ dandy.” She wheeled out of the alley and drove a block down the street, then pulled over. Even with the windows open, the smell of me was sickening. “Walk over there and clean up,” Dee said, pointing to a Chinese restaurant across the street.