Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

To make matters worse, Daniel couldn’t quit, or even slow down. Trapped in the bright July sunlight pouring in through the open doorway, he was at that point in his fantasy where Gloria was begging him to split her in two with his big, hairy monster; his poor hand couldn’t have stopped if the old man had chopped it off and thrown it to the dogs. With a shudder, he unloaded his jizz all over Lucy’s plastic face, the crooked orange mouth, the bobbing blue eyes. Then, like an omen, a black wasp glided down from the rafters and landed gently on top of the doll’s fake blond hair.

“That’s Mary’s doll,” the old man repeated, his voice revving up this time, trembling with static. He stood there for a minute, looking down at the doll Daniel still clutched in his shaky hand. The wasp began struggling to pull itself loose from the sticky hair. “I always knew you was a retard,” the old man said, reaching over and squashing the insect between two calloused fingers. Then he pursed his lips and shot a stream of brown tobacco juice on Daniel’s bare feet, something he loved to do to all his family at impromptu times. “Now zip up and get rid of that goddamn thing before your sister gets hold of it,” the old man said. “I’ll take care of you later.”

Stooped over with another disgrace, Daniel carried Lucy down to Black Run and threw her into the muddy water. He watched her float past the cable that marked their property line, then walked slowly back up through the field to the slab house. Maybe he was turning into a sex fiend like his uncle Carl, he thought. He pictured himself in the nuthouse on the hill over in Athens, sharing a padded cell with his crazy uncle, trading sick stories about the good old days, arguing over who gave the best blow job, Barbie or Ken.

For the rest of the afternoon, Daniel warily watched the old man strut around with a fifth of wine like the Prince of Knockemstiff, the kind of windbag who showed no mercy and killed blood relatives for an extra sack of corn. Finally, near suppertime, he called Daniel into the kitchen. The rest of the family was already gathered around the Formica table with the bent leg so they could benefit from the old man’s royal blathering. Daniel’s mom nervously polished one of her lard buckets and Toadie, the little brother, kept sticking his tongue on the fly ribbon that hung from the ceiling, while the sister, Mary, stood still as a tree in front of the window.

The old man walked in a circle around Daniel, scratching his chin and looking the boy over as if he were a prize shoat at the county fair. Finally he stopped and pronounced, “You need you a goddamn haircut, boy.”

Daniel, his heart sinking like a stone, took a deep breath and resigned himself to the scissors his mom kept in the kitchen drawer. But then, in a surprise move, the old man whipped out the long knife instead and shoved his son down in a chair. “You goddamn move, I’ll scalp you like an Injun,” he said as he gathered up a long brown lock of Daniel’s hair in his fist and began sawing close to the scalp. He was like that, the old man, full of mischief when everyone else was down.

It was like being in the electric chair, Daniel would think later, though without the pleasure of dying, or even a last meal. But with specks of his blood splattered all over the corn bread, and hair floating in the soup beans, who was hungry anyway?

Later that evening, Toadie skipped out to the rotten picnic table under the hickory tree where his older brother sat brooding over hair and hair’s fate. All summer, Daniel had dreamed of stepping onto the school bus after Labor Day with his hair hanging down to his shoulders. The scene was as clear and vivid as a movie in his head, and now the old man had taken it away. “You look like a dern lightbulb,” Toadie said, running a broken plastic comb through his own greasy locks.

“Shut your mouth,” Daniel said.

“You was ugly and now you’re real ugly,” the little brother said.

“Want your ass kicked?”

“Mary wants her doll back,” Toadie said, determined to rub it in.

“Tell her it ran away.”

“That ain’t the truth and you know it,” Toadie said, though a crinkle creased his forehead as if he were trying to imagine it. “How’s Lucy gonna run away?”

Daniel stared across the hills behind the house. The red sun was sinking like a giant fizzing bomb behind the Mitchell Cemetery, where hair continued to grow, undisturbed by butcher knives and old men. “She hitchhiked,” he told his little brother.

That night, while lying in bed and listening to the old man cuss some rock-and-roll band playing on the Ed Sullivan Show , it suddenly occurred to Daniel that anyone, even he, could be a hitchhiker. He’d had it with hick hairdos and lard sandwiches and having to make up movies in his head while the old man hogged the TV. When Ed called the rock group out for an encore, Daniel heard the crash of a bottle against the wall. “Might as well watch niggers as listen to this shit,” the old man yelled at the TV. The boy ran his hands slowly across his head, searching out each tiny gash that had been made with the knife. Then he rolled over and began planning his escape.

…..

AFEW DAYS LATER, DANIEL WALKED TO ROUTE 50 AND stuck his thumb out. It wasn’t long before a white semi speeding past suddenly downshifted to a stop, the air brakes screeching, the trailer bucking and hopping on the asphalt. The truck driver’s name was Cowboy Roy. At least that was the name spelled out in ragged black electrical tape on the rusty doors of the cab. “I ain’t really no cowboy,” he blurted before the boy even got settled in the seat. Pulling back onto the highway, he went on to confess that he’d never actually been on a horse, either; that, in fact, he was allergic to horsehair. “Everyone’s got their cross to bear, I reckon,” the trucker said, pushing back the black ten-gallon hat that sat on top of his round, sweaty head.

Cowboy Roy was on his way home to Illinois. He was fat and wore tight coveralls that threatened to split open every time he hit a bump in the road. His feet were encased in pointy brown cowboy boots. A set of shiny spurs hung from the mirror. To make up for his allergy to horses, Cowboy Roy did other manly cowboy stuff, like drink cheap whiskey from a pint bottle and chew stringy tobacco and write songs in the tradition of Marty Robbins.

Daniel didn’t say anything. He figured the man had as much right to call himself a cowboy as the movie stars on TV. The trucker rattled on about the best way to build a campfire in the rain. It suddenly occurred to Daniel that out here on the road you could be any damn thing you wanted to be. You could make up a new life story for every stranger who offered you a ride. You could be a Boy Scout without a single badge, a millionaire without a pot to piss in, a cowboy without a horse.

“So,” Cowboy Roy finally said, “where’d you get that haircut? Cops do that to you?”

“Nah, my old man,” Daniel said.

“Damn, he musta been highly ticked off,” the trucker said. “What the dickens got him so riled up?”

Daniel hesitated, thinking of the day in the shed with Lucy, then finally said, “He caught me with his girlfriend.”

Cowboy Roy gave a low whistle. “Well, that’d do it,” he said. “But pap or no pap, I’d shoot a man down like a dog that scalped me like that.”

“It weren’t like I didn’t want to.”

“So you ran off instead?” the trucker asked.

“When I go back, I’ll have hair clear to my knees,” the boy vowed, staring out the dirty windshield.

Just as they crossed over into Indiana, Cowboy Roy gave Daniel a red snot rag to tie around his neck, just like the one that he wore. “So people will think we work the same spread,” he explained. Then he handed the boy a harmonica to play while he sang a song he’d just thought up. Puffing out his cheeks, Daniel raised the mouth harp up to his lips, then noticed a thick glob of tobacco juice oozing from one of the reeds. “I don’t know how to play,” he told the trucker.