Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

Author:Donald Ray Pollock
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social life and customs, Knockemstiff (Ohio), Short Stories (single author), General, Fiction - General, Knockemstiff (Ohio) - Social life and customs, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Fiction, Short stories
ISBN: 9780385523820
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-03-18T07:34:07.329000+00:00

BACTINE

I’D BEEN STAYING OUT AROUND MASSIEVILLE WITH MY CRIPPLED uncle because I was broke and unwanted everywhere else, and I spent most of my days changing his slop bucket and sticking fresh cigarettes in his smoke hole. Every twenty-four hours, I wiped him off with a wet cloth and turned his broken body over to air everything out. He’d been totaled in a freak car crash and had ended up with a giant settlement that cursed him with enough money to vegetate for the rest of his sorry-ass life.

I was supposed to be staying straight—his daughter had even insisted I sign a goddamn scrap of paper—but late one night I found myself fucked up in a strange car littered with flakes of dead skin and stolen tools and those gas station cassettes that are always on sale for $1.99. The driver was a hillbilly guy named Jimmy who kept calling me cousin, but I couldn’t even remember meeting him—let alone seeing him at one of the reunions we used to have when our family was still permitted in the state parks. Still, being the type of person I was, I’d apparently let him talk me into huffing several cans of Bactine, and then I was sick, and my brain felt like a frozen bleach bottle. As snow swirled all around us in the Wal-Mart parking lot, I rinsed the inside of my face with Jimmy’s last beer and vowed never to stick my head in a bread sack again.

Some time after that, around 3:00 AM, we ended up at the Crispie Creme looking for Phil, a friend of mine, who was supposed to have some Seconal suppositories left over from his dead dad’s unsuccessful bout with cancer. The Creme is the only thing open in our town after the bars close where you might find people like us, but there was just Mrs. Leach, the cross-eyed waitress who always creeped me out because once, in jail, I’d held her son in my arms. Wherever I went in those days, I stumbled across the bill collectors and misfortunes of my past, while any chance of a future worth living kept spinning farther and farther away.

We ordered coffee, and then Jimmy and I sat down in a corner booth away from the old lady so she didn’t have to look at us. Why worry an old woman at that time of night? The place was all windows and plastic woodwork and those buzzing fluorescent lights that always make me look like a corpse. A radio in the back was playing a fast Christmas song that only religious people could understand.

“That’s the last time I do any of that stuff,” I said. “I was talkin’ to fucking Fred Flintstone that last can.” Fumbling with a cigarette, I took a chance, surprised I didn’t ignite from all the fumes I’d inhaled.

“Fuck, all I ever get is the sirens and those goddamn goofy lights.” Jimmy pushed back a wad of crusty hair. He had sideburns that didn’t match, and the eyes of a man you wouldn’t trust with a milk cow.

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