He was on fire. The grass in the yard was dying and the water spigot was rusting and John was asleep on the sofa.
The last check came by mail three weeks before the third anniversary of the accident. Sam put the envelope in the front pocket of his work coveralls, the stiff, white corner of the check covering the red embroidered “s” of his name, turning it into something unfamiliar.
Sam stood in the center of the tiny kitchen scuffing the rubber soles of his work boots against the chipped brown linoleum baseboards. He was a small man by most accounts, quiet and sensible, standing just shy of 5’7” with small, calloused hands, certainly more a man of skill than words.
In 1989, a year after failing out of trade school and three months after his step-father snuffed it; Sam came back to Dix and rehabbed the tiny shamble of wood planks and drywall into something more decent than the shack and Bible that the bastard had left for him.
The layout wasn’t perfect, but Sam liked the way he could reach anything he needed just by extending an arm one way or the next. Accessibility, he thought, was key. Face the window and reach left to wash off the grease stains that marked his hands, right to cook a TV dinner, back to answer the bill collector on the telephone or face forward, as he did then, to get a beer and a clean look at the quiet rural skyline and the gaunt frame of the Son hanging crooked above the window.
After seven years of living alone, eating, sleeping and working alone, Sam put out an ad in the Jefferson County Caller for a boarder. He asked for only $250 a month, including utilities, to offset building costs. He knew it was a steal and purposely set the price in the hopes of finding someone to drink and pass the hours playing cards with. He never thought to seek a wife.
Sam, bent at the waist, loitered in the cool air of the open refrigerator, trying to find some kind of reprieve from the oppressive July heat. He stood there, motionless for a moment, scanning the wreckage of old takeout cartons, searching for a beer when John came in. John was the boarder, had been for nearly two years since a fallen I-beam sent him home with no feeling below the waist and, at 43, calling up for social security, courtesy of Knight Hawk Building Corp. The monthly checks totaled just under $300, leaving him enough for two cases of beer and a carton of smokes a month. Broad-framed and tall, John wore his 235 lbs. well. His watery eyes and scarred hands were more crippling almost than his dead legs, as both shook and jerked with an equal and alarming violence, just never at the same time. His hacking cough was an added perk and Sam came to accept it as endearing, even found its hollow rattling sound comforting as it drifted down the hallway, from John’s lips to Sam’s ears.
“You grab one of those for me, brother?”
“Want Miller or Old Style?”
“What you think, brother? Miller always.”
“Good thing. This Old’s opened up. You can’t do that—open them and not drink them.” Sam shook the opened bottle lightly and held it to his ear, listening for fizz. “And your hands are shaking again. Did you take the pills like you’re supposed to?”
“I don’t needa. ’Sides, it only gets bad in the afternoon.”
Without moving a single pace, Sam turned to his left to empty the bad beer down the drain and reached out his hand to give John his beer. His fingers slipped off from around the neck and the bottle landed with a soft thud into John’s cupped hands. With a sudden jolt of force, John’s hands began to twitch, tremulous and ferocious, sending the bottle tumbling from hand to lap to foot to floor, finally coming to a rolling stop beneath John’s chair.
“Fuck! I break it?”
“It’s no problem, it’s okay. It’s not broken—stay where you are, I got it,”
Sam got to his knees and with a quick sweeping action, retrieved the bottle and stood back up. He held bottle to his ear, waiting for the muddled hissing to subside. After a moment of listening, the hiss subsided to a purr. Sam twisted off the cap and threw it to the ground, expecting a perhaps a quarter inch of angry head to slowly rise up to midneck, instead the beer foamed up and down the neck, over the slope of his fingers and onto his shirt. Without thinking, Sam put the bottle to his lips to stop the fizz.
Noticing John’s stare, Sam flushed slightly. “That was graceless. Sorry. Anyhow, here, take mine, I’ll drink this one,” Sam’s voice broke at “drink” and he cleared his throat to steady it, “you really gotta get that shaking under control. You take that new shit the doctor gave you?”
“Effexor or some horseshit? Yeah, I took it. Don’t know what dumbshit reason for. I ain’t depressed cuz I can’t feel my goddamn legs, I’m pissed off as shit. You want de-fuckin’-pressed, try not being able to feel your goddamn dick. There’s no medicine for that, Brother.”
John let out a snort and drained his beer in a swift gulp. Sam touched his thumb and third finger lightly to the bridge of his nose and blinked.
“Hey, how bout you take that check a’ mine you got in your front pocket there and go get us another few cases, Brother.” John lazily tossed his empty behind him, missing the trash bin he didn’t aim for in the first place. ”And get me some Reds too. This shit is makin’ me dizzy as fuck. Shit, Brother, I’ll tell you…”
John fumbled with his front pocket and withdrew a battered pack of Marlboro Reds and struggled, with shaking fingers, to fish a cigarette from the pack. Sam lifted a cigarette from his own pack, lit it and handed it over. John took it, dragged and wheeled out of the kitchen and down the hallway to his dark room leaving Sam alone again, still standing in the center of the kitchen, sipping his beer and scuffing his boots along the perimeter of the kitchen. Without meaning to, he raised his hands to his front pocket, touched the check, ruffled its corner and swiped it under his nails as he looked out the window. He saw out across the browning yard, past the Johnson’s chained pit-bull lying under an equally old-looking bare elm, over the roof of Butch Tenneman’s powder blue Chevrolet pickup and stood there, staring at the stark skyline, dotted with small sketches of light reflecting off the cars on Route 57. Past that were the large, inky shadows cast from the mining trailers nearly shaded from sunlight by the quarry behind them.
Dix was a small town on high land looking out over the two polluted rivers of Jefferson County. Route 57 stretched north and south across the entire town, making Dix either an afterthought or necessity, depending on where the needle of your gas gauge dipped and how susceptible your undercarriage was to the harsh, dusty gravel that littered 57. Sam had built his life on the notion that on any particular day, usually more often than not, some poor fuck would be going just a little too fast to notice the smoke rising from the rental’s tailpipe or to cocky in believing the check engine light wasn’t blinking for them, and be forced to seek the services of Sees Sincere Automotive of Jefferson County, the only two-bit garage in a half-bit town. Sam knew this and regretted it, regretted banking on someone else’s setback to pay his bills.
He stood still for a moment, closing his eyes, tensing up his shoulders. He breathed in deep and opened his eyes when he exhaled. Without moving much at all, he reached forward, straightened the crucifix above the window frame and latched the window closed. The room seemed to almost melt in the stagnant heat of the kitchen. Sam felt almost satisfied in this and stayed in place for a moment longer before reaching for his keys on the table behind him and heading out the door.
After tightening a few lug nuts that fastened the new tires to his old truck, Sam got in, lit a cigarette, jacked up the air conditioning, and fixed the radio on a nightly talk show that devoted much of its two hours of airtime to discussions and praises of God and the recognition of and repentance for sinning.
There was a time, a long time ago, when Sam heard The Word, even believed it. He’d been baptized at fifteen in the Big Muddy and could still, after another fifteen years, vividly remember it. He stood waist deep in the thick, hazy water, kneading the river’s soft silt bottom between his naked toes and waited to be led gently down by the rough, thick hands of step-father, Reverend Thom Lynch. He remembered the gentleness best because he didn’t expect it. He expected Thom’s hands to do as they always did—to leave the same red, stinging welts that transformed into splotches of sunsets painted in broken capillaries and blood vessels as usual. But this time Sam’s skin only prickled, hot and tight and his body tensed, as Thom cradled Sam in his left arm and pressed his right to Sam’s chest as Sam looked above Thom’s head to where his mother stood. Before going down, Thom said prayers and Sam repeated them with as much vigor as he could muster. He thought of his voice as something tangible that day and tried his best to believe that the most pious prayers were delivered straight to God. But before he could let himself slip into the comfort he was supposed to find, his body went limp.
He remembered the church hymns too, favoring the easy rise and fall of the solemn and slow “hallelujahs” and “praises be.” He remembered the Book of Job and the story of the crucifixion. He remembered so much but couldn’t think of what had led him astray.
“Ain’t no need for debating—when god speaks we listen. It’s same reason why we got Ten Commandments and not ten suggestions. No way around it. You do right by the Lord even if you don’t do right by yourself, lest you want that fiery fate, sons…”
The host’s name was Greg Sellers and he was a believer; everyone called him The Rev. He had a honeyed voice and was never wrong. On short drives home and long driveway stays Sam listened, amused, as The Rev put the fact-checking, nay-saying callers back in the right, always speaking with soft and fierce authority, maybe piety.
Sam turned left onto Towne and pulled into Phil’s General’s lot, reluctantly turning the car off in the middle of one of The Rev’s familiar rants about the agony of Hell.
“Name your sins, brothers and sisters! Name em’! Call on Him to right you! You’d better pray brothers! You’d better p—”
Daylight had just nearly been squeezed from the sky and Sam sat gripping the wheel in silence, watching the oranges and purples drain into the blackness. He’d heard it all before; the fire, brimstone, suffering and heat, and laughed out loud, thinking it sounded a lot like the end of July in Dix.
By the time he pulled into the dusty lot, the bank had been closed for nearly a half-hour and any hopes of getting a case of beer and a few packs of cigarettes relied o Phil, and whether or not he was in the mood for favors.
Sam climbed out from his truck, stamped out his cigarette on the pavement and wiped his palms against his thighs. The wind picked up and sent the ashes and embers swirling around his ankles and he noticed the sudden, swollen darkness of the clouds overhead.
Sam had been stopping at Phil’s for years, first for the company and then for the convenience of not having to drive an hour out to Mount Vernon just to buy stale cigarettes by the pack and half expired milk for double the price. Phil’s place was nice, too. Nothing fancy, but he did serve free hot coffee out of a large silver urn and tried living up to his big business dreams by installing “Guess Your Weight” and crane machines. Phil even instituted weekly contest drawings to give away free six packs of Coke and hot pretzels. Sam admired his ingenuity and wished he could employ innocent gimmicks to get business at the garage instead of relying on someone else’s tragedies. “Least it’s not a funeral parlor,” he thought.
He pushed open the glass doors covered with faded advertisements for Kodak film and Kool cigarettes and walked easily up to the cluttered counter. Sam had never seen the place empty before—there had always been at least a lingering group of boys suspiciously hanging around the magazine racks shoving candy bars down their back pockets or at least there’d always been a frustrated spouse using the payphone corner, calling to apologize or explain or end it. Sam had seen all of it happen before. He was always the quiet witness preferring to observe from a distance, but never to judge or tell.
“Well if it isn’t little Samuel Goddamn Sees! Haven’t seen you in here since when, last Saturday in May? When you gonna come over and help me fix up my baby’s sweet sixteen gift? By the time you get around to it, that piece a you-knows-what’s gonna need a lot more than a new transmission.” Sam always thought Phil to be the perfect cross between Santa Claus and Elvis. “Tell you what, you come on over this Sunday afternoon and you can give her the old once-over.”
“I suppose so. What time you thinking?”
“Well, listen now, Peggy’s putting on a roast for Pastor Pierce around noon, so come around then. It’ll be real nice Pastor Pierce to meet you. Then we’ll have some lunch and you’ll take a good long look at Sally’s rust box. How’s that?”
Sam shuffled his feet in place, looking with great care at the scratched surface of the Formica countertop “Well,” Sam couldn’t finish the sentence. He shrugged his shoulders once, mopped his damp forehead with the back of his hand, still looking down, waiting for Phil to continue talking.
“You know what I think? I think that four different pastors in seven years is a real bad record. I bet you Peggy figures if a good roast can keep a man like me around…” Phil chuckled and threw a light punch at Sam’s forearm. Sam winced and forced his lips to pull tight at the corners, into something of a smile.
“But really, I don’t know what the problem’s been. I guess it just doesn’t feel right to a lot of folks since your daddy passed—there was a good, good man. In fact, I can’t think of one person across this whole town who didn’t come to his wake. And that there’s the problem, I say, there’s nobody quite right to step into his shoes; he was the last of his kind.”
Sam stayed quiet. He wasn’t so much listening as he was trying not to hear. There was the scene of his baptism coming back to him again; the dim water of the Big Muddy, the swollen Sunday sky, his mother’s solemn face.
This time Sam remembered himself waking from unconsciousness, soaking wet and cold. He remembered being led to his step-father’s station wagon by his mother, her hands radiating cold on the top of his back, amplified the by the wetness of his skin. She’d opened the door to the back seat, given him a handkerchief for his bloody nose and reached across his lap for her purse. He remembered trying to catch her eye, but she just leaned above him without contact, fished her cigarettes and a matchbook from her purse, and straightened up. She looked at him then, but her gaze drifted above him, to where her husband stood, shaking hands and patting backs.
Sam remembered being alone in the still warmth of the car, trying to decide if he felt any different, any more free. He remembered, too, his step-father lumbering into the cab. Dripping wet, he carried himself with a sense of importance and dignity that Sam couldn’t fathom. He sat himself behind the wheel, trained the rearview mirror onto his face, ran his left hand through his wavy hair, and glared back at Sam. Still looking in the mirror, he spoke to Sam.
“You’re gonna kill your mama. What kinda faggot can’t stay conscious for their own fucking baptism?”
The smile on his step-father’s face betrayed his words. Looking forward, Sam could see the other congregants milling about on the land and realized who the smile was for. Sam remembered his mother walking back toward the car, too, but nothing more afterward.
Realizing his absence from the conversation, Sam ran the fingers of his left hand over the dulling corner of the check and knotted his right hand into a nervous fist as Phil waxed nostalgic.
“Good man, good man. He had a knack for spreading the Word, I always said. Nothing like those flashy holy-rollers they got on TV these days. He was the real deal, your daddy.”
“Step,” Sam spat out the word without meaning to and it fell onto the counter that separated the men. Phil, who had been leaning forward, resting his elbows, straightened up and coughed. “He was my step father, not my daddy.”
“That’s right, that’s right. But he cared for you like you were his own son, though. That’s exactly what I mean when I say it. ”
Sam interrupted again, “Hey, you mind if I smoke in here, I can’t ever remember?”
Phil looked at Sam, narrowed his eyes a little, and nodded. Sam lit a cigarette, unbuttoned the collar of his coveralls and tugged at the neckline of his undershirt.
“You doing alright there, son?” Phil pushed an ashtray across the counter for Sam and squared his shoulders.
“Oh, yeah. It’s hot. I’m just really—hot.”
“Well, why don’t you just hold tight, I’ll go get you a soda and you can cool down.”
Sam nodded and watched Phil as he lumbered out from behind the counter and down the far wall of the store, to the Coca Cola cold case. From the opposite direction a flash of light illuminated the still room and Sam turned his head, alarmed, before realizing it was just the wobbling headlights of a car out in the lot.
A man and a woman nearly fell out the cabin doors. From where Sam stood he couldn’t tell if they were screaming or laughing as they dragged themselves to their feet and through the front door. They broke in with a measured amount of drunken gusto, laughing hysterically. Phil raised his head from the cold case and started towards them, Sam stayed still, looking.
The man cleared his throat and fixed his face to reflect a more serious air but the girl giggled behind him, and his laughter broke through again.
Settling himself behind the counter once again, Phil pushed Sam a Coke, stood up straight and in an overly loud and clear voice called out to them.
“What can I do for ya?”
The girl answered this time, slurring slightly, sounding like a tipsy elf. “We’re just stopping in for a case of… its over here, I see it.” She pointed vaguely and giggled as she made her way toward the back of the store, her friend at her heels, both gasping as they tried to settle down.
Sam watched the pair of them, comparing their features from behind. He liked her blonde hair and the way it curled around her temples, he liked her figure enough too; tall, lanky, shapeless, but his was better, if not mostly the same, just more solidly built with broader shoulders and darker hair. Sam had forgotten what their faces looked like. He imagined hers to be fairly plain, but couldn’t begin to reimagine his. Once again realizing his absence from conversation, he spoke to Phil matter-of-factly.
“Phil, that reminds me, I’ve gotta pick up two cases of Miller and two cartons of Reds. And some white bread.”
Without waiting for a response, Sam turned and walked towards the cold cases, towards the couple. They were engrossed in a fluttering conversation of whispers and Sam kept his distance. He lingered for a moment before opening the glass freezer door and reaching in to pull out two bottle cases. Stacking on top of the other, Sam backed up to turn and ran right into the laughing man. The top carton tumbled downwards and landed with a crash at their feet.
Sam sighed a quick “motherfucker,” and the laughing man, who was no longer laughing, quickly bent down to clear up the shards of glass and pieces of wet cardboard. The girl stifled a laugh from behind them as Sam set down the second case and lowered himself down to pick up the mess.
He squatted down and began to pick up pieces as well while mostly watching the laughing man sway slightly as he squatted down picking up the debris. Sam was shaken by the sound of the laughing man’s voice as he spoke. It was much deeper than his laughter would’ve suggested.
“Sorry about all this.”
Without knowing what to say, Sam nodded and averted his gaze. He felt his face flush.
Each had one hand loaded with amber glass shards and soggy scraps of paper labels by the time Phil arrived with a dustbin and mop. They each emptied their hands and the laughing man straightened himself up, muttered an apology and pulled out his wallet and paid for the two cases of beer, the one he took and the one he ruined. He and the girl ran quietly for the door.
Sam straightened himself up, picked up another case of bottles and walked towards the counter, still a little red. He could hear Phil breathing heavy.
“Sorry about that Phil.”
“Wasn’t your fault that the queer couldn’t watch his step. You see those eyes? I didn’t like those beady faggot eyes. You know what I’m saying?”
Sam shrugged his shoulders, and felt his reddened cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Anyhow, you said two cartons of Reds too? This cash or credit?”
“I was actually wondering if you could just, you know, throw it all on the tab for me…”
“Mighty long tab you’ve got there, son.”
“I know. I understand. I couldn’t get to the bank tonight. Got John’s check right here.” Sam tapped his fingers against the check in his pocket, pausing before replacing his hand in his pocket wipe to wife the perspiration from his forehead. “See, just needs to be cashed. Only, I didn’t have time. I’m good for it though, Phil.”
Phil just nodded quickly and rang up Sam’s things; the beer, the cigarettes and tacked the receipt to the wall behind him.
Sam picked up his groceries, walked quickly out the door and hastily loaded the things into the passenger side of his truck. He turned over the engine and peeled the hell out of the lot, narrowly avoiding an accident with a Yello semi because he couldn’t bring himself to look at his rearview mirror out of fear he’d catch a glimpse of himself. He lit another cigarette and turned from Wabansia to 57 and breathed deep. He reached forward to fix the volume on the radio. The Rev’s show was still on and now he was talking about Adam in the garden and how he named the animal in a mystic tongue. Sam wondered if Adam knew that the serpent would be the evil antagonist before he named it and if it would’ve mattered in the first place.
Sam made it home in half the time it normally took to drive from Phil’s and back; smoking double what he did normally. He drove the truck into the garage that sat like a scrap wood pile painted white and green, put the truck in park and leaned back in his seat, tapping an ash out the crack in the window. After a round of local commercials, Sam cut the engine, gathered the bags, sped to the house and unlocked the front door.
The house was so still. He threw down the beer and cigarettes on the kitchen table, tearing into the first case before he’d even taken it out of the plastic bag. John had heard him come in and in the time it took him to put on pants and wheel down the hallway Sam was already midway through his third beer.
“Hey brother, thank fuckin’ god your back. I got myself a real thirst here. A real goddamn thirst.” John came closer to Sam, who sat tucked behind the table. “You doin’ ok, brother?”
Sam didn’t answer. He was trying hard to remember the words to a hymn he’d learned in grade school, one about a shepherd boy led astray. He looked at John, whose watery eyes were cast down upon his chapped hands as he fumbled for a cigarette. After lighting one and taking a drag, he reached into the open case and opened a bottle.
“I said, you okay, brother?” John’s eyes were son his own hands which were shaking with more violence than usual.
Sam couldn’t find the song. The picture of John; the rough hands and dead legs, watery eyes and smell of booze and self-pity, distracted him.
“I ain’t your fucking brother.”
That night, after Sam had plowed through another ten or fourteen beers, and a pack and a half of cigarettes, he stumbled his way to the bathroom with just enough time to make it to the toilet before puking and just enough clarity to see John’s figure illuminated by the garish fluorescent light against the expansive darkness of the hallway. Sam held tight to the toilet bowl, heaving his way to an emptier stomach. He lit a cigarette to calm himself down and eventually collapsed on the moldy blue and grey threadbare rug.
In his dream, he never stopped vomiting, eternally sick and bloated. Between heaves, he was commanded to name his sins in succession. He smelled the sourness of the brimstone and felt the heat of fire. He accepted his damnation and never once wished for water.
By the time John had smelled the smoke pouring out from the bathroom the volunteer fire department had already been called by Mr. Johnson whose dog wouldn’t quit barking. The door was busted down, John was wheeled out to the lawn across the street and Sam had never felt a thing.
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