Ponyboy

It’s Tuesday. Around 1 in the afternoon.

I’m staring out the window above the kitchen sink.

Henry, my middle kid, is in the final week of his 9th year. No school today again on account of the weather. It’s been that kind of winter. Right now he’s out there in the yard all by himself and I’m watching him and he has no idea about that.

The yard is a mess. Ice. Snow. Dog shit frozen in time. Patches of yellow dog piss here and there, like melted corn/ like pineapple water ice. The trampoline has seen better days too. She looks banged-up/ a flying saucer that came all this way from some other galaxy just to pop a gasket out back of our place. Her riders are gone now. They must have ventured off into the woods out across the creek long ago.

I picture them moving/gliding quietly across our property some 3am. No one around. Bickering at each other. You didn’t have her serviced before we left? God, you’re a fucking twat, you know that? Now what? NOW WHAT?!?!

They cross the cold stream under a starry sky. Little wild brown trout dart away from their space feet.

Deer drinking on the far side stare before they bolt.

You did this!, the alien in the lead hisses at the guy behind him. Never again! I’m never traveling with you again!

They are soldiers in the jungle swamp. Scared. Edgy. Twitchy trigger fingers long and sleek. They push through the current/ bumble across the slick mountain stream stones on the bottom/ emerge on the far side/ one-two-four-nine/ maybe a dozen in all/ shadows in the night over by the Smith’s house but the Smiths are asleep. The whole town is asleep.

They look around, fix their beautiful bug eyes on each other. We’re fine, one of them says, matter-of-factly, with the mindfulness. With the knowledge.

He nods his head at the one to his right. That one raises his palm out in front of him facing the little hill where I sometimes think I can hear the wild turkeys in the morning when I’m letting the dogs out, but I don’t know. Either way/ this guy/ this intergalactic breath-taker who could quite possibly change our world forever just by appearing on the Today Show for a three minute segment around 7:22am on a Wednesday morning, he holds his palm out and slides it, sharply, right to left.

ASHAH!!! they all say at once, as one. Like they’ve practiced this or this ain’t their first rodeo or whatever.

And then. The silent swoosh. What is that? A portal? A gateway? Is there a difference? I don’t know. I have no idea about this sort of thing. I’m asleep in my bed a couple hundred yards away.

Look at me.

Jesus H. Christ.

Look at me.

Laying there beside Arle. Laying there beside her body/ her lovely mind all wrapped up in her milky skin, her red hair slashing down off her scalp like the fountains of Rioja where I rest along my weary road.

Her right there, my sanctuary, in dreams.

And look at me beside her. The big con. Pouring out of my bootleg Cure hoodie on the most magical night, oblivious to the symphony of wonder being unleashed out across the yard/ out across the church parking lot. I sleep all like Pandemic-y. Fits of flab and strange rage howl across my prairie.

I fell asleep drooling on a Russian novel.

I wonder sometimes-and I know this is far out, but, like, I wonder sometimes if the novel reads me too. I mean, it’s obviously way way smarter than me.

I wish I could know how the Russian masters read me.

Look at this guy. Fucking tragic sad bastard. Sriracha breath! Ugh!

It’s been a long day; I read one paragraph and then I’m toast. Zonked. Asleep a while then not asleep, alas, and what the hell. Now I’m up in the dark. Then I’m staring at my phone. Screen cracked in sixty places. I crank the Brightness down so I don’t disturb Arle. But maybe I disturb her anyway. I try not to disturb her, but everything has its limits, you know?

I scroll around.

Button/thumb/fingertip/swipe/fingertip/fingertip/scroll/scroll/scroll/Like/Unlike/No, okay, Like/ they might have already seen the Like/ I have to leave the Like/fingertip/fingertip/scroll scroll scroll and yeah. All this is happening while this freshly-landed UFO is just laying outside there, engine pinging.

Meanwhile the portal door thing slides open like a patio door and there’s this humming green buzzy glow.

One by one they move. Orderly. No visible panic. The last one steps into the light and the door slides closed and then it’s gone. Darkness. Cold winter darkness/ the sound of the stream gurgling slightly downhill/ the deer standing there freaked out, silent and still.

Henry spots me as he moves up across the slippery ice piss, right before he busts through the door into the summer kitchen on his way back in the house.

He smiles without pausing, without missing a step and I stand there with a dirty coffee cup in my hands, sudden sunshine crashing down all over everything.

________

I want to tell my story, someday/somehow, but I’m not sure, you know? The whole thing has been a disaster at times and I’m messed up in the head now. Maybe we all are. Maybe just me. Maybe somewhere in between. But I have always wanted this, to tell my story/ not for any specific reason. So much of me has been just gut feeling. That ought to have ended up okay, but truth is: no.

Things have gone up and down.

————-

‘You like to live in the city/ Yeah, I like to live in my head.’ - ‘Spotlight’, David Allan Coe

I am a fan of being inside the poem, except it ain’t my poem and it’s hard to bring other people along for that, along for when you are straight-up train-hopping across a long high plains that may or may not even exist. There is a high price to pay for that kind of thing. I guess I ought to know, is what I’m saying to you.

—————

The wind at night bashing the window panes. Over-caffeinated, I have lay awake. Wine-drunk, I have lay awake. Clean blooded, I have lay awake in a bunch of beds down the years. Lay awake scared. Offended. Glad to be here. So in love. Turned on and mad for it. Sweat-crusted and grinning in my sleep from the overdose of true freedom that came with running young and wild and free. And I have lay awake older, maybe sadder at times. Misty-eyed at the end of Schitt’s Creek. At the end of Breaking Bad. At the end of the school Christmas pageants. At the kids walking down off the stage in ramshackle rows/ hobos limping down out of the police station line-up/ back into the world/ it’s wonderful!/ so I cry and hide it.

And then I feel fat.

And then I look at eBay, for books about the Battle of Gettysburg. Or for birthday gifts for Arle. Treats for myself. They say you should treat yourself every now and then to help drive away your blues.

Whatever.

————-

How the hell is it that I have made it this far? To his tenth. 10. Henry will turn 10 a couple days from now, on the 23rd of February. In the middle of the long bleak winter. The long sick winter. The blue confused winter is where he claims his day.

I go back and forth so much and I’m sorry about it but I want to tell my story, man. Even if no one gives a damn. When did that ever stop anything?

I won’t be stopped.

I can’t be. That’s what I’m realizing. Even if no one is listening, the story must be told.

Something settles on the woods/ a dusting of snow/ unseen/ we’re all asleep. The story is going down and it always was. And it always will be.

I just wrote that. Is it any good? I don’t know. I hope it is, but hope don’t pay for lunch, you know?

The story is going down and it always was. And it always will be.

Right?

Right.

It always will be. Most of it without me. I think I might be fascinated with that. I think I might be in love with idea of floating out across the yard, over the snow, over the dog shits, through the creek, upon the rocks, by the deer, into the portal. Like Bears in the Night. You know that one.. Bears in the Night? Oh man. That was my favorite book when I was a kid.

Jesus. Maybe that’s what’s going on here.

Maybe I’m Bears in the Night-ing out.

Oh my god.

I hope so.

————

(Take a breath here. Then take another one. Okay. Now walk me out of here.)

Henry.

Dude.

Wow. Alright. Hey, buddy.

I’m talking directly to you here, my man. Is that weird? Haha. I know. I know it is. I’m sorry. But I hope you read these words someday when I am gone and you understand everything beyond what I was ever able to say with the basic pebbles and twigs of any language out there.

Thing is: I have castles built for you, buddy. All across the land, I’ve got ‘em. You just have to close your eyes. You’ll know when. Close your eyes some soft summer evening a long way from now, a long time from now, and the maps will cross your path and it’ll all make sense.

I have so many castles for you that I have built since even before you were born. I built them with my bare hands, I swear. I bled/I threw up. I sweated so long and hard trying to figure out how to raise them up but I did. I did it, man. I sorted it all out.

I know. Castles: can you believe it? Hahaha. I know, right? But I made ‘em for the people I loved the most. I wanted to. Because of the story we made together. Is that lame? Sappy? Oh jeez. I know, I know, but you mean so much to me. What could I do? It was all I had. Now they’re hard to find. You’ll find them though. I know you will.

But look, forget all that tonight. We have a long way to go, so it doesn’t matter just now anyway. The castles are for down the road. That’s what they were built for.

Anyway. Blah blah blah. I’m sorry! Look, just have some Dr. Pepper. You want some cake? Arle made it for you. I’m going to maybe have some wine/I don’t know/ I want to cheers you. I want to hold you in my eyes tonight. Sing to you. People know what I’m talking about. The castles can wait. And they will.

Man, all of this/ I just wanted you to know how much I love you. And to say Happy Birthday to you in my never-ending dumbass way, I guess.

Oh and I hope you dig your gift.

It’s a spaceship that landed in our yard long ago. It came from so far away. Fully occupied, too! But in all honesty I don’t know where the aliens got off to, buddy.

They heard you were turning 10, I guess.

It was all too much for them.

Hot damn.

I get that.

I mean, how is any of this possible?

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Hey there. I hope you liked this recent piece of mine. If you do, please head on over to my new Thunder Pie newsletter on Substack and hit the SUBSCRIBE button. You’ll be helping me a lot by supporting my writing and making me feel like a million bucks. Both of which help keep me off the ledge. There’s a few financial options as well as a free option if you just want to sample the goods a little more. Thanks so much. -Serge

The Coronavirus Diaries (Part 2)

Two nights ago.

I hit pause on Tiger King and head to the kitchen for another slice of pizza. I feel good, floaty, happy, relaxed. The kids slowly dissipated from the house by this afternoon/ mine heading to their mom’s, hers to their dad’s. We get these rare hours to try and relax, we take an hour or two, watch an episode of whatever we’re watching at the time.

And what do we do? We watch Tiger King. The most neurotic twisted piece of candy-coated horse shit dipped in cocaine that probably ever existed. Just like Duck Dynasty was. Remember them? Barely? I know. That’s what I’m saying.

But we sit on the couch, eat the pizza, hope no one coughed on it while they were making it. I head to the kitchen and the twilight is streaking through the front room and the soft glow is pinging off the fresh coats of paint we laid on the walls in there this afternoon and that feels like something to me. It feels accomplished and mature. It feels classic in the very deepest sense of the word/ we painted together across another lost American afternoon. We are set to buy this house we’ve been renting since we joined lives. In fact, we were set to sign the papers today, up the street at the lawyer’s office, except something came up on their end and it got pushed back a few days.

As I move past my wife, past the coffee table, past the bookshelves in the middle of the room… stacks of books scattered around on the floor where I piled them/dusted them off/ remembered I had them/I’ll be damned: A Jesse Stuart Harvest…The Nix….Lewis & Clark’s Journals…City on Fire….so many books: and I need to read some of these….but as I move past them they make me feel something like worth, like, “Hey man, you are doing okay. You got books. You got pizza, homie! And now you two are buying this house…oh shit! Look at YOU!”

I say something about all the good work we did today to Arle as I hit the kitchen.

“Hard work pays off!”

It wasn’t that. That would be dumb. So no, I didn’t say that. I don’t remember what I said, to be honest. I just know I mentioned ‘work’. I just know I did.

Then she’s right behind me/ coming into the kitchen right behind me/ which is strange. This isn’t how this goes. We have our unconscious cues and stage positions even in the most mundane moments. I don’t stand right behind her when she’s bushing her teeth. She doesn’t cut through the bathroom when I’m in the shower. I cut through the bathroom when she’s in the shower. Things just unfolded the way they did a year and a half ago when we started living together and that’s how they remain, you know?

So, what gives?

Why is she following me into the kitchen on my pizza run?

It doesn’t make sense.

Now she is talking. We are two grown-ups talking. Two mature, house-painting lovers/ divorcees/ pizza partners/ parents doing the best we can. I am a handful. I know I am. She is a calm and guiding human. Her faults are tough for me to make out. Her presence calms me unlike anyone I have known in this lifetime. And I know damn right well that I don’t naturally repeat that lovely favor for her in exchange. I beat myself up. I wake up, I start training. In the morning pink, I head to the Joe Frazier’s gym of punching yourself in the face and I do that. I don’t know why. I want to give more/better/ but I don’t know exactly how.

Point is: she rolls up in the kitchen unexpectedly in the middle of Tiger King Episode 2 (paused) and I’m happy to see her, even if I’m slightly surprised as well, because I can whiff the clean green paint she gently spread upon our front door today and it’s whirling all up together with the semi-gloss white I put on the trim and between the various colors I can still see us at our separate walls/ NRBQ on the Soundcore Flare/ NRBQ At Yankee Stadium/ her first time hearing it!/ I was so excited to play her that/ to give that small gift/ and I watch her now and love her deeply/ don’t tell her enough/ we are so badass together/ we are going to make it/ I am learning to be a man!/ I would do anything for you, girl.

She talks. She says what she has been holding back for a half hour now.

It could not have been easy to do that, to know when to open her lips, to let these words out.

“Hey, speaking of work, ummm, remember when I woke up from my nap a little while ago? Well there was an email from work.”

Then a hanging dollop of artificial sanguine spittle lands on my hand. It must have fallen from the lips of the universe. Look at us here in the kitchen talking about work and grown-up shit in the middle of a worldwide pandemic! We got this, babe!

Sing it with me, y’all!

We are doing this!

Working!

Jobs!

(SING!, I said!)

Kids.

Cars.

Bills.

Paint colors: Ocean Foam or Laying in a Moss or Nevada Pine Evening Sun on the Hood of a ‘68 Chevy Sasquatch?

Groceries.

We have an extra freezer someone gave us/ One of those ones you can put venison in if you have any or maybe freeze cakes or something. I don’t know, but we have one of those now.!

Fish sticks for 5, count ‘em 5!

Payments.

Mortgage.

Mortgage Payments.

Morgan Freeman.

Don’t they both sound mature and hip and good?

Morgan Payments.

Mortgage Freeman!

We are buying this house, Honeysuckle Rose. And Covid be damned! AM I RIGHT?!

The nano-dream hits the floor, splatters on the warped fake wood beneath our only feet.

“I got laid off,” she says.

Everything melts back into the other stream of existence I have known in my days, the more familiar one. I feel the rush of the effervescence leak out of the room. The paint smell goes sour/ kid puke in the backseat. My insides roll and I am old friends with the habit energy climbing the cellar stairs.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Kicking the door open/ a flaming dust devil shooting across the room into my mouth and my guts. Upset is here.

“We are so fucked,” I say out loud.

She bows her head and weeps and I don’t go to her as quickly as I want to because I’m not sure this is even happening.

What will become of us?

How will we make it? Her out of work, me out of work. The virus. The house. The kids. The virus. The kids.

Mortgage Freeman grins at us. He looks at me and points a finger long as a hickory whip. Then that deep soothing voice

“You, sir, sniff too much paint.”

The he pulls out a little revolver, still smiling, and burns one through his temple.

Radicchio.

That’s the name of the color of his blood as it sprays all over the pizza box and the ceiling.

——————-

We walked away from Tiger King right where we paused it.

I went upstairs and laid on the bed and waited for her to follow me. This time she did not.

I lay there by myself with the box fan blowing on me, trying to expedite my thoughts so I could fast forward through all of the uncertainty laid out before us. In my head, I grasp for anything. I’m panicked, moving through scenarios that all end in tragic disaster.

It’s a drag. I want to save us. But I am rarely ever able to save anyone. That’s just the truth. I punch myself in the throat but there’s no one around to see it/ to ask what’s wrong/ to tell me I’m not as bad as I think I am/ (You’re worse, Pops!).

So I write it down here instead. Disclosure. I open the barn doors and there’s a fucking tornado in there and…here.

You hold it.

I text her.

Come lay down

Ding. She texts me back.

I’m sorry for everything.

That’s what it says. Can you believe that? My heart breaks. She doesn’t deserve this. I know it’s happening everywhere to everyone, or at least it seems like that, but I can’t help wanting to lash out. To jaw someone. To ramp up my blood and heat up my heart and start swinging with what? Words? What else do I have? I’ve got nothing, man. Just what I showed up here with. Just what she fell for, I guess.

That hits me then.

I can’t right now.

I cannot be this small. This loose with my fear.

In a moment of truth/ I picture her downstairs and Mortgage Freeman is massaging her shoulders as she cries quietly in the chair at the end of the island. She is strong/ mountain strong. But right now, even the strongest need help, you know what I mean?

There’s a trickle of blood mapped out down the side of Mortgage Freeman’s face and he seems almost flirty if he didn’t have that bullet hole in his noodle.

I am made of things yet undiscovered and I will be goddamned if I will miss this now, this reckoning unfolding before my eyes.

I must strike at once.

My walls are steep but I throw myself at them anyway.

Shut up and come up

here. I love you! We will

get through this!! Come

lay with me!!!

———————

A few minutes later, as I’m stressing/ trying to decide if I should fast-track the Patreon thing we’ve been talking about me starting for my writing, the bedroom door opens and it’s Arle.

She moves like she always moves, gliding, perfect posture, I want to crack a fence post on the side of someone’s cheek, that’s how much I love her walk.

She lays down beside me.

I wrap her up in my arms, she’s warm.

She puts her face in my shoulder and I can feel her close her eyes.

I pull her tighter.

“Paint huffer!”

It’s Mortgage Freeman standing over by the closet. Only I notice him. I touch my finger to my lips. Shhhh.

He opens the closet, backs in/ discombobulated, closes the door.

—————

We signed the papers for the house yesterday. Before we went, I made a big tadoo about wearing face masks to the lawyer’s office. It’s a block away from our house, and this town we live in, man, it is super small. The chances of us encountering people who want somehow missed the memo and come close to us in a rush of excitement at spotting us is essentially zilch.

“But,” I tell Arle, “what about when we are there! At the lawyer’s! What if there’s virus all over the place? We gotta wear masks!”

We don’t have masks. We have bandanas. As we are fixing to head up there I douse two paper towels in Formula 409 and stick them in a Ziploc. I shove two pens in my coat pocket so we can sign stuff without touching foreign pens.

Upstairs Arle is working on her hair as I slide by her into the bedroom. I take out my box of bandanas and I choose two of them.

One is Nebraska Arcus Cloud Clover in a traditional pattern.

The other one is Walmart Woodland Camo.

I put the camo one underneath the clover one because around here if you walk down the street with a camo mask on your face in broad daylight: you run the risk that if someone sees you there is at least a chance that they are thinking this might be the moment they have been waiting for for a long long time now. Thoughts get clouded. News blurbs collide. Then they shoot you with an AR-15.

Arle ties on a dainty western one that makes her look cute. Mine make me look insane.

She has hers pulled up across her face the whole walk up there.

I have mine down around my neck like a douche.

I hand her a doused wipe as we approach the door. She uses it to turn the knob. Inside there’s not a lot of people. I’m nervous, fidgety. Arle is poised and graceful. She is pretty in her mask. No one else wears one. I never pull mine up.

To our house closing in the middle of a global pandemic: I wear two big green bandanas around my neck. Like a leprechaun cowboy.

We sign our names.

We buy our home.

——-

On the way back, Arle gives me shit in the alley for not wearing my mask when all I did was bitch about how we had to wear them all day long.

“I KNOW!,” I tell her. “I was embarrassed! I didn’t want to offend anyone!”

I also say other stupid shit and by the time we hit the yard, I have said something wrong and ruined a moment, I guess. Arle goes upstairs and lays down as I keep painting the walls.

But it doesn’t feel right.

I put Miles Davis on. It doesn’t make any difference.

I eat a granola bar and look around the kitchen. I’ve covered the walls here with the kids’ art from school. If it’s colorful, I put it up. Cardinals. Snowmen. Gum ball machines. I put them all up. In the kitchen. Arle never says a word about that. She swears she digs it, but I don’t know. It’s a lot. Most people would probably ask me to back off the Kindergarten classroom look, but she never does.

These are our walls now.

Or at least they feel more like ours than they did a few hours ago.

Nothing ever really belongs to us though, you know?

I mean, reality’s endless filters and flags and loose co-operatives dictate a world image that seems to indicate that we are people named this and that…. living in a country called this or that….buying a house or a car or whatever with money that stands for this or that….losing sleep in the long dark night/ tossing and turning over whether we will be able to continue keeping our share of this or that or the other thing…when really you don’t have to too many layers of the symbolic onion to recognize that '‘ownership’ is just another makeshift table/ three walnut shells/ a little crowd gathered round/ find the little silver ball, mister!/ which shell is she under this time?/ place yer bets, people.

I put down the cutting brush on the lip of the can and head upstairs.

Arle is under all the covers. Nothing can get her there. Not the unemployment blues. Not the husband who was a fool. Not the politicians on TV. Not the virus down the road, all spread out and stalking you ‘til the end.

“Hey!” I say.

Mhemw. That’s what she says from under the pillows on her face.

“What are you doing?! You’re being silly! Come down and paint with me! I didn’t mean to say dumb shit. It’s just my way of proving I’m still alive to you.”

Then I add, subtly, “I’m sorry.”

Mhemw.

I don’t understand the word she says, but I do understand the tone. That is something that comes with certain territories. The closest people in your world/ you can understand their tones even from under an avalanche. If you’re lucky in this life: you can communicate with a very select few….maybe even only one, in the old ways, in the ancient ways that existed even long before language gummed things up.

I know what she means.

She means: “Okay, asshole. I forgive you. We bought a house. I love you. Wear a mask so you can’t talk as much, okay?”

Then I head back downstairs. The future is uncertain. Miles Davis blows his horn. The joint smells like paint. The books are on the floor. The room is bright and beautiful, new evening shards of fading sun shattered all over our worn-out rugs.

You don’t really own anything in the end/ you just borrow it.

I hear her coming down the steps.

I hear her coming ‘round the mountain when she comes.

I pick up the brush/ keep going.

The Coronavirus Diaries (Part 1)

Something wakes me up seconds before her alarm goes off. The alarm is for some random time, I think. 4:48am maybe? 4:49? Some weird-ass time. And you know what? I think she sets multiple alarms on her phone to be honest. Because there’s more than one and I don’t think it’s a SNOOZE thing. It just feels different somehow, like an orchestrated onslaught, a series of early morning attacks that come out of nowhere, slicing the darkness with the terribleness, a blitzkrieg of Apple iTones that make a body crash back onto this rock, onto this diseased hunk of bat shit from outer more peaceful dimensions, and it’s throws me.

How did I know?

How did I anticipate the alarm? How did I wake up nanoseconds before the first wave hits us?

Boink/ eyes open/ where am I/ i’m in the dark/ I’m in the bed/ the phone light across the bed goes out as she hits a button on it and the sound stops too, but I was up right before it all happened and I’m trying to process this remarkable superpower I may or may not possess.

And maybe more importantly: why do I feel okay? Where is the grog of my youth? Where is that 7 iron to the jaw that predawn used to bring? I used to wake up without alarms in the heart of the night as the alcohol became sugar. Later in the afternoon that wild sugar had shape-shifted into more natural states of lethargy and blues.

I’d be mowing a lawn under the hot August sun and I’d feel dark shadows moving across my inner sun. Birds chirping/ kids laughing/ bees hovering over dandelions and flies hovering over dog shit/ and me- without wavering from my long steady line of grass cutting- I’d suddenly feel as if the best thing for me to do would be to stop the mower/ go get the keys to the car/ leave quietly/ no words/ he never even said goodbye/ and drive to the place that I have always had picked out to do the thing that I had always figured I would do.

These mornings though, I don’t feel that instant melancholy when I beat her alarm to the gates of the new day. I open my eyes and wait for the pain and confusion and most of all the deep abiding regret, but it never shows up. Instead- and this is madness, but I swear it’s true- instead of feeling like a hollow log being slow packed with moldy buffalo chips, I lay there in the dark and I am straight-up fascinated by this feeling.

I can breathe. My thoughts are clear. I can plug in the Christmas lights by the bed as the second wave of bombers comes tearing up over the distant skyline of her phone/ over there by her slowly waking body/ and I can look at my Gettysburg books on the shelves on the desk a few inches from my face/ and I can acknowledge to myself- right there/ in the wee small hours- how messed up it is that I’m 48 years old and I look at these books like I used to wake up and look at my baseball cards when I was 10.

But also how seriously beautiful it is too.

Because it really is, man. I spent so many years in the dungeons of my own self-loathing. I was a fat boy who could never shed the weight even if I lost it all. Even now, I feel odd sharing this with you. How could you understand? How could you possibly know what it feels like to have a little parking lot in your mind and it’s almost always on the screen up there, and in it: there’s my car (the car changes through the years) and there’s the Pennsylvania State Trooper car/ no siren/ no lights/ slowly rolling back the short dirt road from the main road/ State Game Lands/ no one around/ I shot my first deer, a spike buck, right over here by the creek when I was 16/ he double-parks in back of my car/ radios in the license plate/ gets out/ walks up to the windows slowly/ and sees what I’ve been seeing for so long now.

How can I expect you to know that? I wouldn’t want you to either. And don’t feel bad for me. I half brought it on myself I’m sure. I drank a lot trying to feel happy or feel adequate or whatever.

Now the trooper, he doesn’t see anything. Shit, even my car evaporated right before his eyes and he is probably checking in with his religion because he is thinking he might be hallucinating and that is the Devil’s plaything, don’t ya know. Because look: my car is not there, Hoss. Because I’m in bed at home, waking up feeling okay. Feeling clean. Feeling her rolling around over there under the Blitz.

I sneak out though I guess she knows I’m going.

I take a pill.

I wash my hands.

I don’t wanna die.

But you know how it is these days.

Trouble oh trouble/ hear you knocking on my door.

————

Charlie and Violet are under blankets on the couch.

Henry is still up in bed, I guess. So are Milla and Piper, my step-kids. It’s about 9 in the morning this past Monday and the TV is on and it’s YouTube, which…well, yeah…. of course it is. Here’s a free loose observation. Allegory, maybe? I don’t even know. But YouTube is Earth/ Earth is YouTube. This app or channel or whatever the fuck it is: it’s s a galaxy unto its own at this point, a place where anyone can eschew common sense and practicality by zipping right by ‘sensible’ videos on how to make homemade apple sauce ,or how to create your own kitschy replica of van Gogh’s Starry Night out of dollar store finger paints, or how to install a CD player in that space under your behemoth black microwave hovering over your matching black oven like a UFO hovering over all that midnight corn, in favor of watching a 17-year-old cackling high-pitched British kid who seems high on something I don’t even know about in a small screen in the corner of the TV while the rest of the TV is filled up with footage of the video game he is playing and talking to. I can’t explain it any better than that.

I would get so mad at my kids for liking these videos. How could a living breathing human being derive joy from watching another human being play a video game while you just sat there and stared at it all? Would this even make you a better player at the game? I doubt it. How could it?

And if not, then what’s the point?

I wrestled with my soul about this. I talked with Arle about it. She always has a common sense approach to things, but that’s not what I was looking for here, okay? Each time I would walk through the house there would be at least a few kids sprawled out in the living room/ dead-eyed or laughing hysterically/ and I would right away want to turn it off and scream at them that this crap would rot their brains and dull their senses and, in full disclosure, I truly believed that it was making them dumber.

I believed that watching someone else play video games on TV was making my kids and step kids dumber and dumber.

Then this past Monday, Charlie, who is 6 and who reminds me of an old-school Brooklyn Dodgers peanut seller or something because he has an absolute killer smile and a horribly short fuse like he would waltz up to you and your family during the 6th inning and:

Charlie Hot Nuts: “Hi mack, Beautiful day, ain’t it?! How about some peanuts for the gang, whadya say, three hot peanuts for you lovely folks?

Meek Dad: Well, how much are they, mister?

Charlie Hot Nuts: Ahhh, price schmice, Mister, ain’t I right? Ya can’t put a price on treating your lady and your kids can ya?

Meek Dad: Well, I suppose not. But say, mister, don’t you think just one bag would be enough?

Charlie Hot Nuts: Oh sure. One bag. Okay. Of course. One bag, ya say. One bag of peanuts is enough, he says. We HERE YOU ARE YA CHEAP MILKTOAST BUM!”

Charlie Hot Nuts shoves a bag of hot peanuts into the man’s nose and his family screeches in horror as Charlie Hot Nuts grinds the peanuts into the man’s eyeballs and up his nostrils and you get the picture.

Charlie Hot Nuts: HOW ABOUT THAT, HUH? YA LIKE THAT, YOU LIKE THAT, MISTER ONE BAG?! HUH??!!

I love Charlie so much. But he is Goodfellas Joe Pesci. And I’m never entirely comfortable around him.

Anyway, he sips his chocolate milk and looks up at me this past Monday right after I tell him and his sister to turn that crap off because it’s inane and utterly pointless.

Then I can see him about to Pesci out.

And then he does.

“Dad!”

He always starts like that. A declaration of challenge. Just my name. A gunfighter’s whistle. Meet me in the street outside the saloon. And prepare to meet your maker.

I just look at him and wait.

“Dad! Why do we have to turn it off? That’s stupid! You’re wrong, Dad! You’re mean! You shouldn’t make us turn this off when we like it!

I wait coolly for him to finish spraying his damn bullets all over town, spraying lead just about everywhere but where he was aiming for: in my heart or in my mind. I wait, squinting, just so I can draw, just so I can put him down into the terribly bored dust of this sunbaked afternoon.

But I must be getting old, hombre.

For I did not see this coming.

“You watch fishing on YouTube, Dad! And what’s that? You don’t catch anything! You never catch any fish when you watch it! It’s stupid! You watch a guy catch fish but you don’t catch fish, Dad!”

I feel the silverest bullet nick my aorta in slow time/real time/ and I stand there dazed, staring down the street as a tumbleweed rolls by/ rolls between the little man with the secret second pistol he had been fingering all along.

It dawns on you right before you die.

I know nothing.

I never did.

I smile, blood spittles down my chin.

Joe Pesci in a black cowboy hat glares at me from the couch. He has no front teeth. He is wearing a Mario Brothers t shirt.

I collapse in a final heap as a savage wind roars down off of the mesa.

It is a beautiful death. My most beautiful death of the week so far.

——————-

The last place I went was to take the recycling up the street to the bins a few days ago. Then I threw the Frisbee for Angus for a few minutes. Then I drove in my car around the back roads thinking I would listen to a podcast, steal a moment or two for myself. I never did though. I headed back to the house. I felt off.

You feel off?

I feel good some days, then suddenly I feel off. Full moonish. Cantankerous. Sober but pissy.

I try to wrap my head around it. What am I feeling?

I think perhaps I’m scared? Easy answer to come to, I guess,; I mean: we’re all a little scared, I’m sure. But what of it? Where does that bus leave you off each day? You know your way home or no?

I get to washing my fucking hands so much and I haven’t been anywhere, haven’t touched anything new, really. But maybe I have? Maybe I touched something like the dog’s leash line out in the yard and maybe when I was upstairs doing some exercising or staring at my Gettysburg books, maybe some kid cut through our yard and he picked up the leash line in his hand just for the hell of it and his little boogie fingers has the virus all over them. Tons of virus! All over the goddamn dog line.

And here I come: whistle-whistle-whistle-hummin’-a-merry-tune, hooking Angus up to the thing, and he’s watching me, Angus is, watching me with his Night King eyes, and he can SEE the virus…he can literally SEE it with his DogVision and no one knows this, but yeah, dogs can maybe see the virus, but he doesn’t say jack shit. He just watches ten thousand tiny burning pirates jump ship from the metal clip in my hand to the sleeve of my hoodie. He stares at me, his face drooping a little. He loves me but he knows that I’m done for.

Then what?

Ten days, if that?

Then what?

I keep washing my fucking hands like a crazy person. I have no idea. I wake up seconds before the alarm. I read the news. I roll my eyes at the President/at his people/at all the fools. I stare at my kids while they’re not looking at me/ while they’re laughing with each other or fixated on the thing they’re drawing/ their little tongues sticking out the corners of their mouths/ masterful concentration/ completely oblivious/ thankfully oblivious to the horrors rolling across the land/ and then what?

Tiger King with Arle in the evening?

Maybe a movie?

Pizza?

Salad?

Then what?

Before bed: Edward Coddington/ The Gettysburg Campaign/ moving slowly north/ each night a few miles further, I ride/ towards a thing I will never fully understand.

Then what?

I wake up before the alarm, just milliseconds before it all goes down?

I cough?

I cough again?

Is that how it goes?

Then what?

I get more scared?

I lay there in the dark. Awake. Feeling clean. Third cough.

Then what?

Answer me.

Then what?!

—————-

Up on the mountain, just north of town. The sky breaks, a few weak pink ribbons. Our alarm is going off back at the house. Or maybe it’s done going off and we’re still just laying there. Working from home. Staying at home. Home and not working. Working on the home. Horking on the whome.

No one cares up on the mountain. There’s no one up there this morning as the sun does what it always does whether we notice or not, whether we can even see it or not.

Still silent grey like a world underwater. Like some ancient hilltop under the sea.

A deer. Right there. See it? See its tail flicking just a tiny bit? Oh and there’s another one. Does. Two does. Oh and one more, look! That’s a doe too. There so onto us, I think. Just staring at us now. Oh wait, we’re not even here. Remember? We are not up here/ up there.

No one is.

Just the deer moving along the ridge after a night spent pecking at the forest floor and sometimes staring at the moon.

A little more light now. Pink streaks/ rare steaks.

Did you hear that??!! Oh my god! That was a gobbler! You heard it? Okay good! The first gobbler of the spring! If that doesn’t get your blood moving then…

THERE IT IS AGAIN!! HE’S THUNDERING OFF DOWN THE HILL SOMEWHERE!!

What a sound, huh?

What a wild and beautiful sound to bear witness to.

THERE! AGAIN!

Holy crap, he is going off. Gobbling his head off.

This cool air feels so good.

Or it would if we were there.

But no one is there, I know I know.

I can see the deer though. And I can hear that gobbler going off, can’t I?

Can’t you?

Did any of this really happen?

It happened this morning, didn’t it?

Tell me it did.

Even though we missed it, it’s there, ain’t it?

And tomorrow too?

And all the days to come?

The alarm goes off for the fourth time.

I get up.

Go downstairs.

Make coffee.

Get on with it.