Bud Smith - F 250

“Nobody has cancer.”

There was a poster of Gail from her wrestling days on the wall above the radiator. It was warped from the moisture.

“And I’m not doing so well, either. You’ll be the one,” he said, “my only family.”

“I’m not your only family.”

But I was.

“If something happens to me — let’s say, the doctors want to keep me going, hooked up to a machine, breathing for me or whatever. You gotta tell them no.”

“So grim, man. All the time. Grim. Either drunk or grim.”

He pulled a napkin out of the holder and wrote on it in neat block letters:

do not resuscitate

aldo kaczmarek

5/15/2003

Then he signed it.

“Don’t care if I get burnt or buried,” he said. “But I don’t want to keep living if I decline much more than I already have. I used to be able to pick a washing machine up over my head.”

“What good did that serve?”

“Do not resuscitate.”

I crumpled up the napkin and tossed it out the window. “You fucker.”

“You little shit.”

Gail came out of her room dressed but wet-haired. “What are you two conspiring about?”

“Nothing,” I said, standing up. “Gotta go.”

Aldo rubbed the silver stubble on his red scalp. He shrugged like a child. A jack-o-lantern smile.

I said to Gail, “Sorry to be running so soon.”

“It’s fine, doll.”

Aldo said, “See you next Tuesday, Lee Casey.”

“Going across the street,” Gail announced.

“Wine and smokes,” Aldo said. “Please.”

Out on the street, I picked up the napkin rolled into a little ball. Unrolled it. Pressed it flat in my palm. For a time I kept the note in my wallet with a letter my mom had sent me. But both those things got destroyed by the ocean on a beautiful day.

Yup, I fucked her.”Seth’s first words as the screen door smacked shut behind him. He struggled to climb over Feral’s obstacle course of vinyl and VHS boxes.

Her. Denise. “It was good,” Seth said, nodding. “That chick is nuts.” Nuts. A Compliment.

He’d just walked in Lagoon House following a six-hour car trip from upstate New York. I hadn’t seen him for three days. I knew he hadn’t slept much, but he looked no worse for wear — wired even. He was returning from Aunt Kathy’s funeral up past Tull Lake. Mount Mercy. I’m surprised his little shit box Nissan Sentra made it.

I stood in our kitchen looking at all the dishes in the sink. If I was gonna make some ramen, I’d have to wash some. I was making calculations. A pot. A spoon. A glass for some water. A few black flies were circling. I felt ill. Seth threw his army backpack on his bed. I wondered if his suit was all folded up in there. I didn’t own a suitcase either.

He came back out. Wild eyed. Bounce in his step.

“Denise Santalucia,” he said. “Denise Santalucia.”

I nodded. Didn’t even ask anything stupid like, “Are you gonna tell Ethan?” I knew there was no point. I’d been with Denise the same night too. The only reason I didn’t get laid was because I didn’t have coke. Seth did.

After a long ride back to Jersey, I expected Seth to sit down or collapse on the couch or straight up just go to bed. Instead he said, “Let’s go out.”

Alright. That’s all he had to say to me. It’d been a long day for me too, working out in the sun, dragging boulders from the quarry to a house on a hill. But I wanted to go out. See the bright lights. Watch the world shift all around me as I sank into drunkenness or better.

I found my silver Nikes, washed my face, dug out a clean t-shirt. My beard was getting too long. I was starting to look like a Neanderthal. I frowned in the mirror.

“I need a haircut.”

Since my troubles with Natalie, I’d grown my beard, hiding. I was hoping to find some chicks at the boardwalk who didn’t mind a Neanderthal hiding behind a beard.

We drove the F-250 away from the lagoons and the marshes that lined the bay and cut across town. Strip malls. Dunkin Donuts. Fried Paradise. Mattress Mayhem. I took a shortcut through the development where we used to live as kids: small houses and town cops sitting in parking lots beside blinking neon signs — watching, waiting, hoping. I took the back way out of the development and past the Mayweather, past the high school where I first met Seth in seventh grade.

The guidance counselor there actually introduced us, in his office, right before summer. I’d been in a fight with somebody and Seth was new — transferred in halfway through the year. He was quiet and withdrawn. Hadn’t made any friends yet. His mom had died, and his aunt couldn’t afford to keep sending him to a private Catholic school anymore. The guidance counselor knew that my mom was gone too, but in a different way, and he thought Seth and me could be friends … both of us being motherless and all that.

Turns out it was true. We hung out most days that summer. He had a drum set, and I’d sit there and watch him play. At first, he was trying to teach me how to play drums, but it didn’t stick; I have no rhythm. One day, a band forgot a guitar in Spider Bar after their set, and Aldo gave it to me after it wasn’t claimed for a while. I mowed lawns and saved up for a little ratty amplifier. We started playing in Seth’s bedroom while Aunt Kathy read her mystery novels on the couch downstairs — earplugs jammed in deep.

Seth dug through my cassettes but couldn’t find anything he wanted to put on. He flung them into the glove box one by one.

“Boo! Hiss! Lame tapes, man.”

“Lame? Get bent. There’s nothing lame there,” I said. “Besides, fucker, what you consider lame is taken with a grain of salt.”

“Why?”

As if it was a great mystery what I meant.

“KISS,” I said. “A KISS fan can’t be completely trusted.”

“Don’t be afraid of the crap you don’t know. Don’t be quick to judge.”

“I know enough.”

“Says you. Sometimes something can be so bad it’s good. Not ironically either. It can be so bad it’s great.”

I turned onto route 9, finally, leaving the pine trees behind. Headlights pointed on the highway.

“Hey, tomorrow morning, you should come with me somewhere,” I said.

“Well this sounds ominous. Did I get you pregnant? Do you need an abortion?”

“Yes, yes. That’s it exactly. It’s a job I’m bidding on: a waterfall into a swimming pool. You should come with me. We could both talk to the home owners.”

“Sure, I’ll come keep you company.”

“If we get it, we’d do the job together and split the cash.”

“Ah, this again.”

“Come on, you lazy sonofabitch.”

“Lazy, ha. That’s a riot. Yeah, I’m lazy. I just don’t want to dig around in the goddamn dirt. That’s hard work. I like working in the record store. I like giving drum lessons. I don’t like anything at all about cement and shovels and sunburn.”

“We could do this as a business. And it’s a good idea too … if the band thing doesn’t work out. Even if the band thing does work out.”

“If? You’re out of your mind. You know what the biggest cause of failure is in the world?”

“This ought to be good. No, what’s the biggest cause of failure in the world?”

“Having a back-up plan.”

“Screw you. Having a plan B isn’t a bad thing. Fuck, I might even have plan C and D and E and F. You don’t?”

“No, I’m serious. A person can’t commit fully if they know that if they fail they can go with the back-up plan.”

I didn’t say anything.

“All in or nothing,” he said.

On the side of the highway, we passed a drunk stumbling up the shoulder. He was either on his way to the porn shop or Dinosaur Liquor right next door.