..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, January 18, 2004

“If you need a different face, it’s definite time to destroy this place.”
- "Brand New Love" - Debadoh/Deadsy



FICTION:



Sword Fighting (part 2)



That night, Steven's uncle drove for a several hours along the river to find someone he used to know. An old man with the improbable name of “Joey.” He owned a marina and he owed his uncle at least one favor.

“That's right,” Steven’s uncle told them. “Joey, not Joe. Even though he’s way too old to be carrying that “y” on his name. I think it means something in Australian.”

They finally found it, a small pier and a hanger, no lights, boats or little boys in sight. They stepped from their vehicles to stretch their legs, then jumped back when the garage door flew up fast like a map in a classroom. Joey limped out into their headlights and began to circle the boat with a keyhole-saw in his hand, ready to go to work. The man was old. Gray and sunburned at the same time, and after his third lap around the book, Steven was sure that one of his legs was at least a foot shorter than the other, giving him more of a skip or hop than a limp.

He got close and his red face looked like it hurt. Steven thought he looked like he'd been outside in the sun for the first time the day before. The sixth time around the boat, Joey was laughing and swinging the saw by the blade instead of the handle, like there was no reason to use it.

Steven’s uncle shrugged as if to say “you’re each other’s problem now” then unhooked his trailer and drove away.

The boys explained what they wanted. Joey pinched his face like an angry baby then sighed and said that they first needed to cut out the rotted sections and plug the hull the cheapest, easiest way he knew how. Joey pointed them to a stack of plywood against the wall, then dropped the keyhole saw, tape measure, hammer and nails in a pile at their feet.

They worked for six hours.

Joey drank the beer Steven's uncle had left for him and barked orders for the corner. He watched them the entire time, never yawning once. He leaned back on a three-story stack of beer cans he'd arranged on the garage floor. He'd pull one out and drink it, then work the empty can back under his ass and into the aluminum pyramid where it had come from. He said he'd stay up and “help” as long as he didn't fall off the cans.

And he never did, even after he’d emptied them all.

Steven's job was cutting square holes around the rot and prying out the damaged sections. James’ job was measuring the new holes, cutting matching pieces, nailing plugs over the gaps and sealing the seams with black tape.

“Imagine the ship is bleeding.” Joey told them. “Imagine you got to work fast to plug those holes before it bleeds to death. Imagine you got one chance.”

When it was too dark, and they started slowing down, Joey brought out a string of rusty caged lead-lights, hung them along the rail above all the holes, spit on one of the bulbs and smiled while it sizzled. They speeded back up.

While they were patching the last hole, Joey walked out, then came back with a handful of chocolate cake in his fist. He watched them, amused enough to drop his cake and spend the next fifteen minutes trying to pick a piece up off the floor big enough to eat. Steven turned to watch the struggle out of the corner of his eye. Joey’s thick red fingers turning every piece of cake into a rain of crumbs before it got anywhere near his mouth. He finally caught Steven staring and wiped a shaking hand across his cracked lips and grunted:

“Fuck you lookin’ at? That was my birthday cake. No candles but guess what I wished for anyway?”

“For a piece of plastic fruit your fingers won’t crush, Frankenstein?” James called out from under the boat.

“Fuck you, boy.”

Steven went back to sawing into the hull, imagining those fingers trying to eat an orange, juice blinding him as he squeezed it to pulp trying to peel it. He imagined him bringing a styrofoam cup of coffee to his mouth and his thumb popping through the side with a splash. He imagined him trying to clean a cat box, piece after piece of clumped litter exploding into a rain of urine with every touch...

Then a red hand covered his and he looked down to see the blade dangerously close to his fingers. The red hand was steady as rock five miles underground.

“Watch what you’re doing.” Joey’s voice in his ear, swirling around the hot exhaust of alcohol, cherry cigars and chocolate cake.

The last hole plugged, the boys backed up from the boat, wiping sweat and sawdust onto the clean spots on their arms, blinking at the work they’d done.

"Can we drop it in the water tonight?" James asked.

“Nope.” Steven shook his head and said quietly, almost to himself:

"It's too hot out for night. . ."

"What? Shut up dude." James blew something off the end of his nose. "Wait, what did you say? You sounded like a girl just then. Serious. Never whisper anything again, okay?"

Joey sighed and spit at James’ feet then walked back to the pyramid of beer cans. He dragged the side of his foot through the stack to finally bring down the impossible structure crashing down. The empties rattled and rolled away, filling the garage with a blast of noise. One can was left wobbling where the pyramid used to be, like a stubborn five pin in the last frame. Joey grinned and quickly picked it up, cracking it with a hiss.

"Last man standing." He said. "I do the math in my head. Always know when there's one
left." He took a long drink, then answered James. "No."

"Why not? What's left to do?"

"Nothing."

Steven turned away and climbed aboard. He started banging around inside the cabin, looking for anything.

"Then when can we float it?" James whined.

"Never."

"Why the fuck not?" James was stomping over to Joey.

"’Cause it'll sink dummy. Those holes ain't sealed. They just make it look better."

"Then why the fuck-"

"Listen. I don't know how to fix a boat."

"What did we just do all night, asshole?"

Joey bounced the last can off James' chest.

"Work."

Steven's head and hands suddenly sprang out of a window. He was holding a stack of old records in one hand and a stack of broken records in the other.

"Look what I found! Labels are all scratched off though. What do you think that little bastard was doing? Who's records was he breaking? Maybe he was flinging them off the boat at birds or dogs or. . ." James rolled his eyes and turned back to Joey.

"I said, what did we just do?" He stepped forward, inches from Joey’s red and gray face, the smell of sweat and coughdrops coming off him in waves, making James blink.

"Work. I said."

"No. We just wasted the whole fucking night." They were nose to nose. Steven came out and started to climb down.

"No. You didn't" Joey explained, still smiling. "You boys worked hard. You worked for something. You can't dock that thing here anyway. It's not my place. I just keep that pier out there sunk in the mud. Something about this place, nothing ever sticks in the ground. That’s why no one ever docks here. Every night I hammer the four-by-fours with a sledge. Worst job I ever had." He turned away and started rounding up the caged lights, wrapping them fast around his forearms. Elbow to thumb. Elbow to thumb. Elbow to thumb. He stopped to retrieve a thin cherry cigar from the corner of a toolbox. Half was ash, hanging and ready to fall. He tried to reach into a pocket for a light, arms bound against his chest from the electrical cords like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Incredibly he came up with a lighter and sparked the flame. James slapped it away.

"Hey motherfucker. . ."

Before he knew what had happened, James was ten feet away on his back. Joey grabbed a fistful of cord and snapped it high above his head like a bullwhip. A wave traveled down the line of lights to where James was rising and a hot caged lightbulb came off the boat and caught James in the chin. He stumbled backwards feet slipping in the grease and oil on the floor as he tried to keep his balance. He went back down, the back of his head mercifully connecting with the rubber bumper on the garage door and then he was gone. A grumble of disgust outside in the dark. Joey turned his attention to Steven, and even through the beer, he spoke clear and strong.

"Listen up. You boys aren't sailing anywhere. I know your type. All you wanted was a treehouse without the tree. Then you surprised me. You did something tonight, you didn't really fix it, you worked on it though. You did some work. You earned it. Don’t ya get it? You can pretend you built the whole friggin' thing now. And I'll tow it anywhere you want, and that's where it's gonna stay. On dirt, on grass, on the road, where ever. Never water though. That don’t matter. It's yours now. That'll have to be enough. You did something here tonight. You ate up six hours with hard work just like that." He snapped his fingers in Steven’s face then turned his attention to the floor. He started to bend down and couldn’t with the tangle of yellow cord and lights around his arms so he walked to a dark corner and started kicking around junk and cans on the floor. After a moment, his feet found what they wanted and he kicked something outside to where James was sulking. It rolled and stopped at James' feet and he kicked it back into the light. At first Steven thought it was a beer can until he heard the balls rattling around inside. Spray paint. Steven thought back to a time when he’d put a can of spray paint into his father’s vise to crack it open and see what those balls looked like. Just as he turned the crank, his dad came into the garage and tackled him before it could blow up in his face. Steven couldn’t understand why he’d been so angry.

Joey said, "You can spend the night on it now. It's yours. Spend the night on it tonight and paint a name on it. Raise a flag."

They stared at him as he turned back to the cigar nub on the toolbox and picked it up. The tube of ash broke off and started to roll. Those red fingers snatched it up before it fell to the floor. He held the ash up to the light, fingers so steady, Steven thought that the clocks had stopped. The ash never broke as he inspected it, then dropped it into the front pocket of his overalls and walked away. Steven was the only one who heard the last thing he said to them.

“Wasted on you.”


* * *


Steven and James creaked around on the deck under the sun. Throats stinging from vomit, smelling like bar rags, sweat rising off their shoulders like the shimmer of summer on asphalt. James stopped and stared down over the rail, confused at what he was seeing. Then he remembered. They had broken most of the records Steven had found in the cabin. Cracked them into black triangles and then stabbed them into the ground. They had tried to imagine sharks circling their ship, fins cutting through the grass.

"What did we name it?"

"I can’t remember. I thought you named it. You're the one with the purple fingers."

"Wait, I remember now. I think. . .” Steven said, staring at his stained hands. “. . .so what the hell is a 'roadsword'?"

"You spelled it different. It just sounds like ‘roadsword.’ Only our ship is called 'r-o-w-d-z-o-r-d' or something equally Lovecraftian."

"Why?

“I said I don’t-”

There was the sound of a gentle metal chime in the sky above their heads. They both looked to the top of the pole and blinked. Steven hooded his eyes against the sun, then closed them when he saw it.

"What the fuck?” James muttered. “Who raised that little fucker’s pirate flag again?"

"I don't know. You did. Or I did." Steven lied. "I still want to know why we named it what we named it?"

"Who knows? Who cares? Do me a favor? Put your fucking hand down. You look like you’re saluting that flag." He looked down over the rail again and started picking at a splintered section of the hull. “What the fuck did you do? This was one of the holes that I fixed."

Steven came over to look. It was the spray can, stuck in the side of the boat. The wood was cracked and splintered all around it. The can had burst into a flower of metal and surrounding the crater was a bright supernova of purple.

"You christened it, remember?”

“No.” James corrected him. “You christened it. And you wouldn’t stop. You said you were trying to get the metal balls out of the can. You said that you put a paint-can in a vice once when you were little. To get the balls out. . .”

“Yeah yeah. And he ran in and tackled me. I was just thinking about that.”

“No, that’s not what you said. You said that your dad was standing behind you, waiting to see if the can would really explode. Then, when nothing happened, he shoved you too the ground. You said he punished you by taking the vice off the workbench forever and keeping it in his trunk. No more toy crushing for you! You were almost crying."

"Fuck you, I wasn’t crying. So where's the balls." Steven asked as he turned away, choking back something hot in his throat.

"You swallowed it." James suddenly pulled his T-shirt up over his head. "Pull that can out of the hull, dude. We need to raise our own flag."

"C'mon, let's just keep that boys flag up there. His was good. We got to name the ship. What kind of animal do you think that skull was..."

James wasn't listening. He leaned over and wrestled the burst can from the hole. He paced the deck, scraping his fingers around inside, trying to find spots where it was still wet. Then he got down and pulled his shirt off over his head. He stretched his shirt open with his knees, trying to smear their new name onto it. He spit on his fingers to keep it going but about halfway through he ran out of paint. His mouth was too dry to keep spitting and he was close to puking again so he stopped. James jumped overboard and started pulling up handfuls of grass.

"I gotta at least get the S.S. on there." He explained, grinding grass-stains into the shirt.

"You don't even know what S.S. stand for."

"Neither do you." He stopped and looked at it.

"Looks like shit." Steven offered.

James stood silent, his eyes creeping skyward again to the sound of the boy's flag catching the morning wind.

"You're right dude.” James said, voice muffled as he pulled the shirt back on over his head. “That one’s good enough. You know what? I think you were right about those records. He never listened to them. I think he was making sharks out of them too..."

As he was climbing back onboard, Steven grabbed him by the elbow.

"Do something for me, " Steven said. "If anyone asks what the name means, swear you can't tell. Say it's a secret. Our secret."

"Who is ever going to see that stupid fucking name? Who's going to care what-"

"Just promise me.” Steven said. “Please? C'mon. We'll have a secret. Best friends last as long as their secrets."

“Fuck off.”

“Dude, I’m serious. Secrets are good. I’d say ‘shake on it’ if there were enough flies around to tie on your fingers. . .”

"It's not a secret.” James said, pulling away. “It's bullshit, dude. You're saying that best friends last as long as they lie about having a secret. You're not my best friend and you know it. We're just bored together, stuck together. . ."

"Forget it then." He leaned out and stared into the grass, listening to the slap of the flag. He whispered to himself. “Don’t you wish there were really sharks out there in the grass?"

James ignored him.

Later, when he was alone on the ship, he found a spoon in the corner full of dead flies. Even though the spoon was dry, Steven knew that they had drowned.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 5:16 PM [+] :::
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