Donald Pollock - Knockemstiff

MY FATHER SHOWED ME HOW TO HURT A MAN ONE AUGUST night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old. It was the only thing he was ever any good at. This was years ago, back when the outdoor movie experience was still a big deal in southern Ohio. Godzilla was playing, along with some sorry-ass flying saucer movie that showed how pie pans could take over the world.

It was hotter than a fat lady’s box that evening, and by the time the cartoon began playing on the big plywood screen, the old man was miserable. He kept bitching about the heat, sopping the sweat off his head with a brown paper bag. Ross County hadn’t had any rain in two months. Every morning my mother turned the kitchen radio to KB98 and listened to Miss Sally Flowers pray for a thunderstorm. Then she’d go outside and stare at the empty white sky that hung over the holler like a sheet. Sometimes I still think about her standing in that brittle brown grass, stretching her neck in hopes of seeing just one lousy dark cloud.

“Hey, Vernon, watch this,” she said that night. Ever since we’d parked, she’d been trying to show the old man that she could stick a hot dog down her throat without messing up her shiny lipstick. You’ve got to understand, my mother hadn’t been out of Knockemstiff all summer. Just seeing a couple of red lights had made her all goosey. But every time she gagged on that wiener, the ropy muscles in the back of my old man’s neck twisted a little tighter, made it seem as if his head was going to pop off any second. My older sister, Jeanette, had used her head and played sick all day, then talked them into letting her stay at a neighbor’s house. So there I was, stuck in the backseat by myself, chewing the skin off my fingers, and hoping Mom wouldn’t piss him off too much before Godzilla stomped the guts out of Tokyo.

But really, it was already too late. Mom had forgotten to pack the old man’s special cup, and so everything was shot in the ass as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t even muster a chuckle for Popeye, let alone get excited about his wife doing tricks with a wrinkled-up Oscar Mayer. Besides, my old man hated movies. “Screw a bunch of make-believe,” he’d say whenever someone mentioned seeing the latest John Wayne or Robert Mitchum. “What the hell’s wrong with real life?” He’d only agreed to the drive-in in the first place because of all the hell Mom had raised about his new car, a 1965 Impala he’d brought home the night before.

It was the third set of wheels in a year. We lived on soup beans and fried bread, but drove around Knockemstiff like rich people. Just that morning, I’d heard my mother get on the phone and rag to her sister, the one who lived in town. “The sonofabitch is crazy, Margie,” she said. “We couldn’t even pay the electric bill last month.” I was sitting in front of the dead TV, watching watery blood trickle down her pale calves. She’d tried to shave them with the old man’s straight razor, but her legs were like sticks of butter. A black fly kept buzzing around her bony ankles, dodging her mad slaps. “I mean it, Margie,” she said into the black mouthpiece, “I’d be outta this hellhole in a minute if it wasn’t for these kids.”

As soon as Godzilla started, the old man pulled the ashtray out of the dash and poured a drink in it from his bottle. “Good Lord, Vernon,” my mom said. She was holding the hot dog in midair, getting ready to have another go at it.

“Hey, I told you, I ain’t drinkin’ from no bottle. You start that shit, you end up a goddamn wino.” He took a slug from the ashtray, then gagged and spit a soggy cigarette butt out the window. He’d been at it since noon, showing off the new ride to his good-time buddies. There was already a dent in one of the side panels.

After a couple more sips from the ashtray, the old man jerked the door open and swung his skinny legs out. Puke sprayed from his mouth, soaking the cuffs of his blue work pants with Old Grand-Dad. The station wagon next to us started up and moved to another spot down the row. He hung his head between his legs for a minute or two, then rose up and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “Bobby,” he said to me, “one more of your mama’s greasy taters and they’ll be plantin’ your old daddy.” My old man didn’t eat enough to keep a rat alive, but anytime he threw up his whiskey, he blamed it on Mom’s cooking.

Mom gave up, wrapped the hot dog in a napkin, and handed it back to me. “Remember, Vernon,” she warned, “you gotta drive us home.”

“Shoot,” he said, lighting a cigarette, “this car drives its own self.” Then he tipped up the ashtray and finished off the rest of his drink. For a few minutes, he stared at the screen and sank slowly into the padded upholstery like a setting sun. My mom reached over and turned the speaker that was hanging in the window down a notch. Our only hope was that the old man would pass out before the entire night was ruined. But as soon as Raymond Burr landed at the Tokyo airport, he shot straight up in his seat, then turned and glared back at me with his bloodshot eyes. “Goddamn it, boy,” he said, “how many times I gotta tell you about bitin’ them fingernails? You sound like a mouse chewin’ through a fuckin’ sack of corn.”

“Leave him be, Vernon,” my mother said. “That ain’t what he does anyway.”

“Jesus, what’s the difference?” he said, scratching the whiskers on his neck. “Hard to tell where he’s had those dick skinners.”

I pulled my fingers out of my mouth and sat on my hands. It was the only way I could keep away from them whenever the old man was around. That whole summer, he’d been threatening to coat me clear to the elbows with chicken shit to break me of the habit. He splashed more whiskey in his ashtray, and gulped it down with a shudder. Just as I began edging slowly across the seat to sit behind my mother, the dome light popped on. “C’mon, Bobby,” he said, “we gotta take a leak.”

“But the show just started, Vernon,” Mom protested. “He’s been waiting all summer to see this.”

“Hey, you know how he is,” the old man said, loud enough for the people in the next row to hear. “He sees that Godzilla thing, I don’t want him pissin’ all over my new seats.” Sliding out of the car, he leaned against the metal speaker post and stuffed his T-shirt into his baggy pants.

I got out reluctantly and followed my old man as he weaved across the gravel lot. Some teenage girls in culottes strutted by us, their legs illuminated by the movie screen’s glimmering light. When he stopped to stare at them, I crashed into the back of his legs and fell down at his feet. “Jesus Christ, boy,” he said, jerking me up by the arm like a rag doll, “you gotta get your head out of your ass. You act more like your damn mother every day.”

The cinder-block building in the middle of the drive-in lot was swarming with people. The loud rattling projector was up front, the concession stand in the middle, and the johns in the back. The smell of piss and popcorn hung in the hot dead air like insecticide. In the restroom, a row of men and boys leaned over a long green metal trough with their dicks hanging out. They all stared straight ahead at a wall painted the color of mud. Others were lined up behind them on the wet sticky floor, rocking on the toes of their shoes, impatiently waiting their turn. A fat man in bib overalls and a ragged straw hat tottered out of a wooden stall munching on a Zero candy bar and the old man shoved me inside, slamming the door behind me.