author: davy carren
location: san francisco, ca
story title: how death came to sandovar rudd
You’ve
got to hand it to the weather. Sometimes it just knows when to rain. Like
today, when I don’t have an umbrella handy, and there’s no food here, and I’ve
got to wear my nice wool jacket. Don’t ask me about the jacket. When it comes
to the jacket I’ve got no idea. It’s got to be worn. I don’t want it to get
wet. So, here I am, stuck. That’s about all you’ll get out of me. But if the
circumstances permit-- and when it comes to circumstances I don’t know much-- I
might get lucky and catch a cold. The circumstances have to permit it though.
Permission must be acquired, like a new hat or a botched haircut. Let’s agree
on principle. Here, let’s have at it then. When the whole bucks, and we part,
then, of course you’ll see a marginal amount of detail in the differences
between the color and loop. A barn burns so we like fire. It’s a matter of
distinction. Pride and goofing off. Greed leaves us subtle. Then, also of
course, a miserable amount of grief stomps in with two-by-fours strapped to its
feet like skis. You’d be better off just splitting the returns. I know, when it
comes to returns we’re more even keel. I understand this. Bottle caps scattered
around the shore. I’ve got my scars too. Let’s talk equipment. If it’s necessary
to be liked then we’d do well to wish for ailments. Don’t worry. When it comes
to ailments there’s not a lot of aught to. If we’re talking ailments, well,
call me a water hog all you want, but there’s thunder in my cereal. Nobody’s as
funny as they think. Hell, there’s a mission statement in my coffee cup. I’d
draw you a map, but my face will cringe. And I’m the one left pulling strings
on the inside, hefting garbage bags down to the trashcans in the basement, and
chinning up to the moon. Well call me Lady Day and tie a ribbon around my neck.
I’ve got facts to figure out. I’ve got cases to explain. We’ve got to talk
cases and facts at some point. Just like alphabets try on words for size. I’m
going to test the bill. Exposition rendered precisely, in the minutest of ways,
kind of positive in spending habits, that’ll do for me. For me, well, there’s
no real try in it. Got to get mama’s house all sorted out. Of course there’s
always that. That’s first on the list. Got to get those Jack In The Box burgers
out of the freezer. Patch up the walls. Spackle the place up. Really, when the
weather gets this way, well, it’s just like this. Quit. Get a job. Move the
bulldozers over the hill. I can’t help getting needy in the wintertime. Sure,
I’ve bricked my fair share of shots at getting ahead. Like being addicted to
temporary tattoos, or being a little bit pregnant. For me lying is a rebellious
act. I create this life, manufacture this person to be, and I wonder why people
mistake me for a stranger. I won’t go on getting all morose about it. There’s
no danger. It’ll be winter soon. All the drunks will come staggering in,
ass-holing on about the spiritual side of things. After all, we’re lucky
because we get to be humans and exist in the world the way we do. It’s just that
my face doesn’t always make the right faces. That about sums up my adult life.
Summing up? Well, that’s a funny thing. Like an umbrella being out of tune.
I’ve done a few stints in the nuthouse. Can’t say anything too fascinating
about it. Only thought about doing away with myself a dozen or so times a day.
So there’s this patch of land in my head, this scrap of a thing, a borderline
hysterical place that metes out parking tickets to bad memories and tries to
restore peace. There’s just something about thinking that’s always eating away
at itself. You go around. You come back. You bite off more than you could ever
chew, and then get frustrated with your own cud. And so then you go and lop off
a snake-like chunk of the thought that’s squirming here and there and
everywhere, and pander to it some, and there’s only one place to go back to.
Yep. And there’s always something lurking just around the corner like holy god
bringing down his judgment on some specified day that everybody but yours truly
knows about. I offered my condolences to the Hasblitt sisters when their daddy
went AWOL and shot the moon with Francine Yeller that awful February night, and
there’s no telling what exactly did happen to them both, though I’m sure Mrs.
Hasblitt maybe might be able to offer up some. Nobody’s asking anymore, what
with the aforementioned misses now being gone to the great ballpark in the sky,
through doings all her own, mainly a shotgun’s last call. Now, I don’t mean to
be implying that this lovely woebegone thing had anything to do with the
disappearing of those two trysters under the starry sky, but there are those
whose suspicions were aroused, seeing that the petering out of Mr. Hasblitt’s
amorousness for his dearly beloved wife were well known to me. He’d often gate
around the yard, out where the wrecks rust and the feral dogs growl, and we’d
stoop and squat and smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, Old Gold, and he’d get to
yodeling on about some ripe young thing he was about to tear into. I’d let him
talk. I liked the cigarettes, and it was nice to be out there getting away from
my damn infernal solitude for a spell, and he had a hand pistol he’d use to
scare the wild dogs away. He’d rave on about the tempest of his doings, the way
his misses stunk, the hurt that was hanging onto his heart like a claw hammer.
I didn’t pay it a whole lot of mind. Murder was thicker out there than in most
places, and it got slimy and mucked around like week-old stew being dumped into
the road. Oh, let me tell you. There was world enough and time for it all out
there. People stood around and ogled. Sometimes it was like the stars were
watching you too, and there’s plenty more than a lot of them. Let’s not dawdle
around on the circumstances of me being close with that wily bastard. I’ll just
say he showed up sometimes, and we shot the shit and smoked cigarettes out in
the yard, and it was pleasant enough for a hermit like me to have some company
nights. Sure, he talked rot, and was vile and rude and all what have you, but I
didn’t put much stock in his ever doing much besides jabbering about what he
wanted you to think we was doing. One of those talkers you just let slide
because they don’t matter much to anyone except themselves. Me? I think too
much. Too much cerebration. It makes me bad company. I count stars, read the
bible, and gun down snakes with an old Springfield bolt-action rifle from my
bedroom window. People seem to stay away. Moved out here in ’82, before the
Paddington Stock & Rebar Co. moved in and sucked away a bunch of the land,
putting up stakes, claiming land at next-to-nothing prices, and then trying to
profit on the people who’d come to rely on that land. People got mad, but what
could they do? Money won out in the end, as it tends to do. I got myself this
junkyard. I did okay. I managed. Things just ended up in my yard. It was like
ghosts were dropping them off in the middle of the night, and maybe they were.
I never ask those kinds of questions. I just go about my ways, counting my luck
on the three fingers of my left hand, the other two gone to a stray bullet when
I was just scrappy kid, the where and why of which I know about none, since it
was before my powers of memory reached their full potential, and, from what I
was told, the pain of it knocked me out cold, and in fact my ma and pop thought
I’d done gone clean dead on them. But I didn’t. I kept on breathing. And when I
woke up there was my left hand all bandaged up by Doc Shivers, who mussed my
hair and told me what a brave boy I’d been. Brave? Shit. I slept through the
whole ordeal. I guess sometimes you miss the rainstorm but get credit for
walking home through it. Anyhow, I turned out like this with eight digits, and
some folks call me Mordecai still, recalling the great 3-fingered righty of the
turn-of-the-century Chicago Cubs, and I took this as an honor, and now go by
Mordy to most. Though what people call me isn’t a blister or a burp to me. I’m
my own man. That’s obvious of course, but what it means is true. So my junkyard
grew as people moved on, and the scarp heap blossomed into an eremite’s dream.
Carcasses of rotting dodges flanked with sunflowers and moss-covered
refrigerators. It was something to behold. Stuff just found its way to me, and
stayed found for the most part. Television sets lost their knobs and dials. Glass
splintered like spider webs in the sun, which bleached everything to a stale,
desert hue. The rivers of rust ran wild, and like wisteria climbed over toilet
bowls, lunch pails, VCRs, x-mas tree tinsel, radios, aluminum siding, cookware
and computers just the same. I had buyers from time to time, but mostly it felt
like a giant tomb of things people didn’t want around anymore. Maybe I felt
like I was one of those things. But I’m not one to get to sentimental over
objects. They get made, and they’ve got to be discarded. I do my part to help
them on their way. There was a guy at my door one day, banging on the screen,
and I went out there to see what all the hubbub was. This guy’s
grease-splattered and unshaven, and stinks like a brewery floor. He’s got on
these gold-rimmed sunglasses, and his hair is all bunched up like a tumbleweed.
I don’t want to let him in, or get too close, so I only open the door a crack,
and I yell at him from behind the screen with the door still latched. Turns out
he’s a scholar. He wants to talk to me. He’s on some kick where he’s trying to
interview the old timers like me who’ve been around here and through some
stuff. I don’t like the looks of him. He’s got holes in his shoes and shirt. It
seems like he’s had his pants on for about a month without changing or washing
them. I just know he’s not going to be nice on my upholstery or my carpet. But
for some reason I let him talk his way in there, and we get to jawing, mostly
him, about the old days when I first moved in here. At first I was kind of curt
with him. Didn’t want to give too much away. And being laconic’s in my nature
anyway. Most days I hardly say a word except when the mail arrives. But this
tawdry scholar guy, well, he’s really trying to dig in for some information, and
I’m curious as to why, but mostly keep that to myself, as is my wont. I’ve
learned to play it close to the vest over the years. So I get to saying a few
things I probably shouldn’t, and then he starts getting into a huff about it,
and my mean streak comes out in spades, and soon we’re cussing and throwing
good-sized objects at each other, and I tell him to go fuck himself and all
this, and he’s seeing red, and I realize that he’s not so small of a guy
really, and that maybe he’d take me. I mean without weapons. But I’ve got
weapons of all sorts. So, I run back to my bedroom and make sure to slam the
door behind me so it thwacks him, because I know he’s coming after me, and it
knocks his ass right down hard, which gives me time to grab my….well, I’m not
going to go into all that. No need to implicate myself. Let’s just say, he got
what was a coming, and what was a coming was a trip to county. That did him
well I think. Lousy bastard. Never saw him after that. Heard he was living in
Topeka, last I know, and had shacked up with a bow-tie salesman named Robert.
It was odd, but I didn’t care. To each their each. That’s what I say. But me?
Well, I’m done losing fingers. Let him take a shot at my head next time. That’d
be okay by me. Until then? Well, it’s think, think, think. Collect junk and
wonder about god. There’s nothing left I can do.
