Damage - A. M. Jenkins [1]
You’re staring at your hands and the memory runs, like a movie: the hiss of shaving cream escaping into a frothy white pile; the sharp clean scent. The soft light foam hanging off your cheeks like a floppy beard. The connection, you and your dad, both scraping tracks in white lather, you with a toy razor.
You raise your head to stare into the mirror again. Those three-year-old cheeks belonged to you. Not some guy in a picture. You.
You turn the faucet handle all the way to the right. Shoot, there’s plenty of people who are abused or neglected, plenty of people who would probably love to have your particular life instead of their own. Your life that’s a gift from God.
It’ll be an outright sin if you don’t snap out of feeling this way.
The water rushes down the drain, running from cold to hot, sounding so alive and urgent that it gives you the traction you need to climb out of this rut.
Okay. So you’re going to clean up a little. Then you’re going to put on a fresh shirt. Put on that smile, like clicking on a button.
And then you’re going to go out.
You’ve parked your truck in the usual spot, past your country neighborhood with its patchwork of trailers, houses, small farms, and ranch land, out where the old railroad tracks disappear into dirt and tall grass. You and Curtis are sitting on the tailgate, but Dobie slouches long legged in the bed of the pickup, carelessly leaning against the wheel well next to the ice chest.
This is partying, Parkersville style.
Your beer bottle’s empty now, but you don’t move to throw it away.
“You all right?” Curtis asks, eyeing you as he takes another swig from his longneck. Curtis Hightower is your closest friend, your next-door neighbor, too—not in the town sense, where neighbors live right in one another’s back pockets without ever knowing each other, but in the country sense, where neighbors are like family, yet everybody’s got a little elbow room.
“Yeah,” you say. You are all right, and what would you tell him, anyway? Sometimes I can’t face getting out of bed? Sometimes I feel so crushed I can’t move? Like Curtis can do anything about it anyway. “I’m fine,” you add.
Dobie pats the ice chest. “Want another?”
“No thanks.”
Dobie looks at you for a moment, confused like a dog, like you didn’t speak his particular brand of English. Then he nods. “It won’t hurt to lay off for one night,” he says, as if to comfort you. “You drank enough at the lake last week to last you through a dry spell.”
“Hell, Austy’s probably still getting over that one.” Curtis swings his legs idly, as relaxed looking as ever, but his dark eyes are sharp on you. He does that sometimes, his words dry and teasing, his eyes searching.
Tonight you think they might be searching for something Curtis feels but can’t name. You swing your legs, too, your hands gripping the edge of the tailgate, trying to think of the right words to say. Curtis has a head-on, outspoken way of looking at things, and you don’t particularly want him looking at you right now.
Click. You grin. “I think it’s a good idea to leave some of the drinking to the other guys,” the Pride of the Panthers announces in just the right voice. “That way they’ll all be busy burping and pissing while I’m out chasing the ladies.”
Curtis chuckles. You relax.
“They ain’t ladies once you get through with them, Austin,” Dobie remarks.
“Now, why do you say that?” you ask, to egg him on. Curtis just listens, his eyes roaming out into the darkness now. “Why shouldn’t they have a good time, too, without you calling them sluts?”
“I didn’t call nobody a slut.”
“Are you saying you’d marry some girl who’s slept around?”
“Well, no, but that’s different.”
“Nobody’s going to marry Dobie,” Curtis says, deadpan. “Not with that beer gut he’s getting.”
“So are you,” Dobie shoots back. Dobie believes anything anybody says to him. Curtis is exaggerating about his beer gut; in fact he is outright lying. Dobie is tall and thin and mostly cowboy hat and legs and belt buckle. He isn’t muscular like you or even wiry like Curtis.