Untitled Story

*Untitled*

Out of the dark, a phone rings.

He rolls over and groans, intent on ignoring the intrusion. The mattress shifts, and he feels a familiar weight on his side.

“Goddammit, baby, answer the phone,” Darcy whispers.

Shaking his head, Luc untangles himself and shifts his legs to the floor. A sharp intake of breath and a shiver from the cold.

“Hello?”

“Luc, it’s me.”

Sudden stillness and a shot of adrenaline.

“Dad?”

“I’m just up the road at a payphone. I’m gonna walk on over, so get your ass up and let me in.”


“What? I mean…what the fuck? Where have you been?”

“Listen son, just let me in. I’m freezing out here.”

“Okay, okay. Come on then.” He sits on the edge of his bed for a moment, lighting a cigarette, his fingers shaking. Things had just been settling down, and he doesn’t want this. Not now.

Luc thinks of his father’s hands. They were always so heavy, and as a small child he had always feared them. He would always shrink away from those hands, and though his father would laugh it off, Luc always knew that it hurt him. But he couldn’t help it, those hands would appear in his dreaming, transforming into long nails or needles, black and thick with scales. A patting of his head at nighttime or the way he stroked mother’s hair, these things that won’t go away.

His father had been a mechanic, and Luc remembers him tinkering in the garage, all rusty tools and oil stains. He was truly gifted at it, possessed with that rare ability to bring dead things to life. But some things break so easily and are so hard to fix. His hands were always covered with oil and dirt, and Luc remembers the time he would spend over the sink in the garage, trying to scrub the filth away, intent on making himself look respectable.

He could never get it all off.

***

“Quit gawking at me like that. Invite an old man in -- this night is harshing the skin off my bones.”

Luc cannot quit staring, not yet. His father is standing on the steps of the porch, shuffling his feet, never advancing under the roof’s awning. His feet sound out twisted rhythms that crawl up Luc’s spine. He looks tired. As he moves back and forth the glow of his cigar dances in the night, the smoke drifting upwards and turning bluish under the flickering glow of streetlamps. The dirt road which borders the house is as dark as pitch except for small sepia circles squatted beneath the lamp poles.

“Man you look like a stretch of bad road,” says Luc, unwilling or afraid of admitting how good it was to see him.

“That’s true and ya know it. Now let my ass indoors.”

Luc pauses awkwardly, he knows what is at stake here, and he recognizes that vulnerability in his father’s voice. He runs his hands through his hair and looks away, following the lazy circles of the moths as they beat against the porch light. Should he? Probably not.

His father had taken the quiet moment to run his fingers through his fraying overcoat and had deftly produced a pint of whiskey, half-full. His nervous fingers rattle off the screw cap and he leans the bottle back as he takes a pull. He starts to screw the cap back on but, thinking better of it, he takes another pull and offers it outwards to Luc. A greeting gift, or maybe penance.

“It’s like that then?” As Luc speaks he feels himself shivering. He had been trying to bury it all for years, but now that it was back he is excited by the dread feeling that something was going to happen. Change stumbling out of the fabric of nighttime streets.

At Luc’s words the father’s movements stop, standing completely still, his arm outstretched in offering. He looks at his son with uncertainty, as if he doesn’t know how to respond, only that how he answers is important.

“Yeah. I reckon so.”

The words hang heavy in the air. Both men look at the other and an outsider would not know if the shape of their bodies signals conflict or agreement or something all the more terrible.

Luc spits to his side and steps forward, taking the bottle and gazing into its amber depths. He drinks.

“Well let’s get you warmed up then.”

***

Smoke in the air, drifting under fluorescence. A hollow crack! as the now empty bottle descends onto the table.

The men sit at the table across from one another, their arms resting amidst overflowing ashtrays and envelopes containing bills, mostly unpaid. His father scratches at his beard. Sighing. Pensive. “That bottle sure as hell didn’t make it long.”

Luc grins, but it fails to reach his eyes. Just the mechanics of the action, nothing more. Nodding slowly, he responds, “They never do.”

“You sure got that right.”

Luc stubs out his cigarette and pushes his chair back, wincing from the screech of metal on linoleum. He pushes himself to his feet, and exhales the last dregs of smoke.

“Let’s see if I can rustle something up.”

Opening a cabinet door he produces a bottle, green-labeled and squat. Cheap scotch. He opens it and takes a drink before returning to the table. His eyes water. A tongue of flame makes its way down his chest. Looking at his father he is not sure if they drink in celebration or mourning, or both.

His father leans forward onto the table, about to speak, but stops as a voice calls from the second floor.

“Luc, honey…is someone here?” Darcy’s voice, soft and with a Midwestern anonymity, seems to dissipate quickly when compared to the syrup-tongued gruffness of the two men.

Luc places his hand to the side of his mouth and calls, “Come on down baby. It’s, uh, it’s my old man.”

The sounds of her steps precede her, and Luc’s father grows visibly nervous. He relights his chewed-on cigar and it makes a quiet crackling. He snatches the bottle from Luc and raises it to his lips.

Luc watches as Darcy reaches the bottom of the stairs and halts, seemingly unwilling to enter the kitchen. “Luc?” she asks, sounding puzzled. “You never said anything about having your father visit.”

Luc’s father removes the bottle from his lips and places it behind him on the floor, obscured by the legs of his chair. He stands, wiping his mouth with the back of his left hand, and tips towards her his wide brimmed fedora.

“Well that’s cause he didn’t know. My names Agon -- mighty fine to meet you.” Cocking his head towards Luc, he says, “I’m this one’s pa.”

Darcy smiles, causing the lines in her face to crinkle and darken in shadow. She stands in a middle point between the hallway’s darkness and the light of the kitchen, and her eyes shine out of the penumbral half-light. Stepping forward, fully illuminated now, she leans against a windowsill and speaks.

“Pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Darcy.”

Agon smiles, straightening his back, and seems more comfortable. He tips his hat a second time, this time replacing it at a jaunty angle. “Ma’am.”

Darcy moves behind Luc, placing her hand on his elbow, and speaks, this time with resigned apology. “I won’t be able to sit up with you two; I have work in the morning and just won’t be able to face it if I haven’t any sleep.”

Luc kisses her on her cheek, feeling relieved. “Its okay baby -- we’ll be fine. Get some rest.”

Returning to his seat, Agon calls out, “You have a good sleep, that morning’ll come early -- don’t matter if you want it to or not.”

She nods as she leaves the room, and then pauses at the stairway. “Luc, is your mom going to be coming too?”

A sharp intake of breath from Luc. He sees his father’s head jerk towards him, brow raised and eyes flashing. Luc looks away, and fiddles with his shirt sleeve, twisting a button.

“Naw, baby, not this time.” As he answers he avoids his father’s eyes.

The two men hear her steps ascending. Luc continues to look away, absorbed in the needling and weaving of his fingers.

His hand is trembling, a gentle vibrato. A string snaps, and he watches as the button falls to the ground, bounces in a few decreasing arcs, and then rolls across the cheap tile, around legs of furniture, through grooves and tracks of dust, and falls into the deep of an air-conditioning vent.

He doesn’t hear it hit bottom.

Luc hears the bottle hit the table and looks up. His father’s face is a mask over the furnace of his eyes.

Agon exhales a cloud of smoke and coughs, violently, into his fist. The cough is a loose rattling, something like a broken-down engine. The smoke hangs thickly in front of him, drifting along the table. For a moment Luc is reminded of cloying incense and ecstatic chanting during childhood church services. The scarlet vestments and electric-organ gospel of religion in the back-woods.

Agon speaks, and his tone is placid, conversational. “You son of a bitch. You didn’t tell her.”

Luc looks at the bottle before him, and then leans backwards, shaking his head. “Hell. I’m drunkern shit.”

“I’d of done figured you’d have learned to drink by now.”

Luc looks upwards, his vision passing his bottle-held reflection and then resting on his father, and he searches for some indication of Agon’s thoughts. He finds none. “Dad, shit. About earlier – I woulda said if – if I’d known you was coming. I can explain.”

Agon turns to look out of the window, breathing softly on the glass pane and flooding it with steam. His finger traces a spiral through the fogged glass. After a moment he wipes it away with his jacket sleeve. “Not now boy, this talk’ll go better after more drink and some sleep. Later.”

“A’ight.”

“You got a nice spread here. Treating you alright?”

Luc speaks, trying to sound not so sloppy. “Some days better than others.”

“I hear that.”

“What about you? What you been doing these years?”

“It aint a pretty thing to tell.”

“Don’t matter. Seems like it might need telling just the same.”

Agon nods his head, and opens his arms wide like a bard ready to perform and explain the world away. He rolls up his sleeves and leans forward, shoulders hunched. As if he was telling a forbidden secret. Conspiring.

Luc looks at his father’s now bare arms, and shudders. Not the arms he remembers. Light blue tattoos, homemade and fading. Cobwebs over his elbows. Christ crucified on his left forearm. And his veins, Jesus his veins. Luc looks away. Scars traced down his arms, dull track marks. Veins collapsed into corruption, dark blue, almost black. Pumping nothing but dust and ash. Containing only the memory of blood.

Agon raises a hand to one arm. With his fingers he trails the scars up and down. Almost lovingly, as if brushing the holy. “Don’t you look away. Don’t ever look away. These are the story. You hear?”

Luc turns back and stares, his teeth grinding together. His hands are balled into fists -- he wishes he didn’t need to know. But he does. “Go ahead.”

“Just been trying to see what’s what. After -- well, after it, got myself in a big mean drunk. Stayed that way. Just half drunk nowadays. Heh. Been wandering around. Through this dustbin of a country. Trains. Shelters. Shit, if you want it you can find it out there. Only, heh, most of the time it’s used up and broken.”

“Jesus, dad…”

“Hush, you gonna talk or listen? Besides, aint too bad. Everyone learns how to make do. Ran into some problems. Some biker knifed me. Over nothing but a pool game. That worthless son-of-a-bitch. So I laid into his ass, caught an assault charge. Wound up in county jail. Don’t that beat sweet fuck-all?”

“Dad, that’s…that’s fucking horrible.”

“Nah. Just the nature of the thing. In prison there was this old preaching fella. On a couple year stretch for boosting cars. He told me that he loved two things in this world, the Lord and the Needle. So I tried both. Figured they might even each other out. Sooner or later I kicked the junk habit. Was running out of veins anyways. I kept the religion. At least the parts I got use for.”

Luc stares at his father, wide-eyed and unable to look away. “You a born-again?”

Agon laughs, and it sounds like the crackling of static. “Shit, since the accident I’ve tried everything once.”

***

The men are still awake, still drinking. Neither smiles now. They both sit in silence for a moment, listening to the air conditioner sputter and hum. Coming to life. Outside just the faintest glow of light begins to rise.

The morning sunlight intrudes into the kitchen, glares off of the bottle and sets to turning the few fingers of whiskey remaining into a color that is almost, but not quite, golden. They both squint, and though Luc’s voice slurs and rolls, the drink has had no visible affect on Agon besides stoking the ever-growing intensity of his eyes. They have only spoken of trivial matters, no resolutions have been found, no promises spoken. The search for something on which to stand has been jettisoned for the moment.

The grumbling of a heavy-pickup passes outside. Luc leans backward to peer out the window, but the truck has already passed by. Light kisses the dirt kicked up and swirling. A cloud, blood-red and clotted, remains in the air. Blood seeping out of the dry and cracking ground like some atavistic cancer long ignored. All is obscured, objects around the road lose their definitions, becoming just haze-shapes, wavering beneath the wall of dust.

Agon is still performing. He talks of people he’s met: preacher-men, girls down on their luck, junkies, prize-fighters, kind old nuns with helping hands, runaway kids, veterans with nowhere to go, speed-freaks, smugglers, would-be poets, doomsday prophets on street corners, carnies and tight-rope walkers, crooked cops, sidewalk musicians, card-sharks, smugglers, sailors drunk on the wharf; people stumbling, dancing, fucking, laughing in hysteria, jaws clenched and screaming, throwing up their hands outstretched in supplication or with fists punched skywards and angry. All figures lost, moving through metal-choked cities and the empty places and all in-between. An open-exposure of generations too far gone into this or that to ever really return. Just looking to make it and leave their mark, whatever it may be. Dancing to the silence. Serenading the morning streets. Lost.

***

Luc has fallen asleep, his head laid on the table, resting in the cradle of his arms. Drunk and tired. No longer able to listen to his father’s stories.

Agon sits for a moment, taking another drink as he stares at his son. He rolls down his sleeves. Retrieving his jacket from the table, he rises and shrouds himself in the fabric. Reaching into his pocket he produces a small picture. It is old, heavily creased and torn on one edge, smudged with dirt and fingerprints, aged to a brittle yellow. It is the last thing he truly owns. He raises it to his lips. A kiss. Then, kneeling, he places it on the table gingerly, as if it is something sacred or hieratic, a missal or catechism, and perhaps it is. His hand lingers for a moment, pressing down on the picture with his palm. He removes his hand. Then, turning, he looks at his son, leaning close, and whispers into his ear. A single word. He rests there for a moment, and then kneels down to kiss Luc twice on the crown of his head. A gentle moment, hidden away. Redeemer and redeemed. He rises, eyes like dark stones, and he lets his fingers trail through Luc’s hair as he turns and leaves the kitchen, leaves the house, out into the country badlands. It is full morning now. The sun hangs immense in the sky. A burning whiteness.