Ben Metcalf - Against the Country

The beer helped with that, the concern over parents and charred country remains and so forth, as did a particular girl. She was from the center of the county, older than I was and with hair the color of dark, oiled wood, and she gave no hint that she either despised or pitied me for the numerous times I had probably been beaten before her large and curious eyes. In fairness I cannot say for certain whether she was physically present at any of my humiliations, only that she would have known about them, though it would be nice to be wrong about that too. As I stood beside her, already altered by the beer, and stuck on what to say, a boy came into the firehouse and demanded that the music be turned down, whereupon he announced that two of our number were “doing it out in the ditch.”

What I have related thus far is not necessarily what I meant by that audacious “analogy for my art and way in this world” above. Nor is the phrase explained by the fact that upon hearing of the goings-on in the ditch I began to laugh and (in imitation of television’s imitation of vaudeville) spit my latest mouthful of genuine Budweiser beer directly into the pretty girl’s hair. I remember that she glared at me, bedraggled, with either a new or else a renewed scorn (I will never know), and was quickly taken off by her friends to wash the incriminating odor out of her hair. I myself was taken off by my brother to witness the fornication, which act we had heard tell of but never ourselves observed, let alone performed, in a ditch or otherwise. We were bound to be disappointed. All the ditches we came upon were empty of people, if not of sin, and the grass around these gouges admitted of no rustle, except where we yelled “Copperhead!” and kicked the next boy’s legs out from under him, sure in our inebriation that he would not land ass-down on an actual snake. By the time we returned to the firehouse, and the too-bright bustle within, the girls had rinsed out my victim’s tresses and were indicating by means of folded arms and theatrical huffs that a formal apology was expected. We decided that I should probably go ahead and offer one, as that was bound to be funny, whereas a refusal to do so would not necessarily be.

I found my lady with a comb in her still-wet hair, and as I opened my mouth to speak she took my hand in hers and led me away from the others. She walked me to a spot in the front room where we could be alone, if not unseen, and I made no objection to that. She sat herself calmly on a wooden chair there, and pulled me down beside her, and held my eyes for what seemed like a minute or two but was probably only a systole. She then asked if I was sorry for what I had done, and I said I was, which was true but also, by that point, a thoroughgoing lie. She smiled at this, the lie I think, and leaned in close enough that I could smell the soap and mall-bought eau de toilette in her hair. Her eyes met mine at a distance of two or three inches and allowed me to focus on what I hoped or even believed might be her intention. This accomplished, she reached back and pulled the hair off her neck and whispered, in a voice too womanly for either one of us, “Then blow it dry.”

That was my second erotic experience in the rural parts, that I know of, and the only reason I do not count it superior to the first is that it involved no direct dealings with pain and so can hardly be considered representative. I felt little beyond a sudden rush of warmth, and a dizziness that increased the more I stared into those eyes, and blew into that hair, and asked myself whether I would vomit before or after I had kissed that self-satisfied pout. I harbored some further concern that a vomit might propel a further round of alcohol into her hair, and so undo not just the pout but also what delicate ministrations had lately been done in the bathroom, yet I cannot locate any real guilt in the thought. My attention was applied, as it has been ever since, to the aesthetics of the problem: even then I understood that a vomit might rob the scene of its crystalline charm, or else overdo it, and so I resolved to attempt the kiss prior to any discharge, rather than after, which to this day I contend was the proper approach. Sadly, I was unable to test out the theory: word began to go around that a young man, “bullshit” over some perceived slight by a girl on the premises, or possibly out in the ditch, had squired a pistol to the party and was wholly prepared to use it.

This is what I meant, mostly, by the “analogy” business above.

Said development prompted nearly everyone present to make for the relative safety of home, yet a few stayed behind, out of curiosity, or gamesmanship, or because they felt safer in the firehouse than they did in the dark of the countryside, all of which I can understand. Later I heard, though the tale may be apocryphal, that these stragglers found themselves obliged to listen while the young man waved his gun around and sang forth his complaint, and that by the time the police arrived he had convinced them all of his need for immediate incarceration, yes, but also of the undeniable righteousness at work, somewhere, somewhere , in his decision to come to the party with a gun.

I do not claim to have any such righteousness at work on my behalf, only that I wish to be heard, and that I will take such measures as are necessary to secure myself a pulpit. I am unable, of course, to track down and shoot any member of my congregation who attempts to run off, but this should not be taken to mean that the runner will be safe, for ignorance and loss will attend such a creature always, and cowardice will be its constant shadow, and disdain will be its eternal reward from those who have made no retreat into that demimonde wherein a page or two glanced over is sufficient basis for the lie that the whole has been endured. Were I not word but true flesh I would hunt these carpetbaggers to the ends of the earth, and show them what mercy as they have thought to show me, and water all the dried-up creek beds of my childhood with their blood, and fertilize all the half-starved crops with their innards, and winter-proof every farmhouse window with their skin, and make hippie dreamcatchers out of their bones and sinew, and throw those chunks of them without obvious use (their brains) into the nearest ditch not occupied just then by a pair of country lovers unable to afford, or by their supposed common sense to locate, a simple town mattress.

Enough! Enough with asides and pale echoes of my shame! Enough with the fantasy that my past, or rather this wordy imitation of it, can be made to expectorate a worthwhile excuse for my crime! Enough with the conceit that a weeviled memory could possibly meet even the most basic requirements of this work! My brother has lately told me, and my father has since confirmed, that I took a shotgun down with me into the road that day, an old.410, as opposed to the rifle I remember with such vividness and such idiot pride. I have no doubt that their powers of recall far outclass my own, and so I hereby stipulate and declare:

It was a shotgun, not a rifle, and I may have loaded it, and I may have intended to fire .

Enough, anyway, with the claim that an excuse has the power to absolve. Enough with theories about whether Jesus was or was not my bosom neighbor out there, and where He might have been (in town? abroad? tending His pot crop out back?) when I needed His hand to stay or steady mine. Enough with attempts to portray intemperance and incontinence as a subsidiary of sin, which arises not from us but from the land we walk and lie upon, I am sure of it. Enough with the notion that the schoolbus was anything more than a vehicle in that hideous place, and that its fermentation of an intemperate society within its walls did not constitute a form of resistance, or else a variety of prayer, even if the prayer went unanswered and the resistance was no more than a snare laid by, and to the benefit of, Goochland County, Virginia.