Give My Love to the Savages by Chris Stuck

Author:Chris Stuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2021-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

This Isn’t Music

You are an asshole. Remember that when you meet Billie at the bar. She’s in a booth in the back. A beer sits across from her. Every few seconds, she looks for you over her shoulder and then turns back around. You’re so late you could just go home to your wife and let Billie think you’re a no-show. You are a known asshole. Another person thinking so won’t be the worst thing in the world. Yet, here you stand in the bar doorway, thinking, This is Billie. You have history. She already knows you’re an asshole. You might as well just walk over to her.

“About time, dicko,” she says.

You are a dick, so distract her. Say, “Black girl, don’t you know it’s bad luck to sit with your back to the door?”

“Shut up. Sit down.” She fires up a fresh smoke. “I’ve been waiting so long I’m drunk already.”

“Of course you are,” you say. “You drink too much.”

“So?”

“So, stop your griping. I’m here now. You can get drunk all over again.”

Don’t worry. She will.

Billie is an everlasting tomboy. Though you won’t admit it, it’s always turned you on. She lifts weights, heavy ones. She fixes old cars. She drives a truck down at the quarry. Once, she was even voted runner-up for Women’s Arm Wrestler of the Year by the American Armsport Association. She nearly won the world championship, too, but she was defeated by a six-foot-five woman who many thought was on more steroids than a horse. Billie’s toughness has been obvious to everyone since you were kids. It was even obvious to you, so much so that to this day you’re pretty sure she can still whoop your ass.

“Where the hell were you?”

Remember, you’re an asshole. Answer accordingly. Say, “I was home. Unlike you and everyone else in this bar, I actually have a life. Dreams. Aspirations.”

Her tank top is stretched over her breasts like the skin of a drum. Try not to look at it. Instead, watch her make a fist out of one of her big hands and wave it at you. “Your dreams and aspirations will only get you hurt, Black boy.”

She’s probably right, but don’t say so. Say, “As usual, Black girl knows nothing of what she speaks. Black girl has never been anywhere.”

She mimics you. “‘Black girl knows nothing of what she speaks.’” She waves her thick middle finger now. “How come you always sound like you’re talking backward?”

“College,” you say. “It does that to you.”

“Hm,” she grunts. “Lucky I never went.”

* * *

You are at the Weigh Station. Not the actual weigh station out on Highway 13, where vehicular weights are inspected, but the bar called the Weigh Station. It’s a trucker bar. Yes, you hate it. It’s the kind of theme bar you find only in towns like Rock City, your hometown, population just over a thousand. No one but you can see the humor in having “city” in the name of a place so microscopic. Barely anyone in the state has even heard of it.

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