I’m new. Here at the department store I’ve
sold myself as a stockboy, part-time, after
school. I don’t have a car so Lamar Croft
drives us in his ‘66 Oldsmobile
442 from school down Sawyer Road
at 110 miles per hour until
we come to Allgood Turnpike. A right turn,
more speed, and then we’re in the parking lot.
He got me the job–Dickie Jordan tried
to get me on at the service station
but his boss wouldn’t hire me because I
was too short to reach across the hood to
clean windshields. Dickie later shot himself
–he was always kind to others; I guess
that’s how kindness goes: others aren’t happy
and you can’t seem to help them and the God
you are can’t control the world you never
made, etc.–a downer so where
does that leave you except in your bedroom
on a Friday night with your father’s Smith
& Wesson’s barrel in your mouth like a
big dick? Explosion. That’s you all over
–walls, ceiling, bedspread, carpet, clothes, books,
photographs of family and pinup girls..
I’m in the stockroom with Roger Frankum,
who works full-time. He’s from the next county,
Cherokee High School. Here in Cobb County
we make fun of Cherokee County folks
because they’re hicks and they drive like monkeys.
Farther away you are from Atlanta
the more backward you are, which means because
we’re seventeen miles from the City here
I’m a hick, too, to the next city boy.
I should be learning a lesson from this
but sensitivity’s for women.
That’s why we like ‘em, or one reason why.
Roger’s got a ‘66 Ford Fairlane
289 and a girl so there’s hope
for me. We’re up on the second floor, where
we hide from one of the Assistant
Manager, I forget his name, because
he’ll want someone to repossess with him,
take a U-Haul truck into the boonies
and fetch back all those things that the goobers
bought on credit and now can’t pay for. Then
he calls my name instead, so I come down.
Where’s Roger, he says. I’m not sure, I lie.
Need someone to bring back some furn-i-ture,
he says. Billy’s his name. He’s real well-dressed,
a tie, and grease on his hair and he smells
a lot like my sister–sweet and oily.
He says furn-i-ture, stressing syllables
identically and saying the t
instead of ch. We’re off to Jasper,
about thirty miles northeast, to collect
a payment or haul a washer away.
She lives in a house that sits on bricks on
each corner. No underpinning. Off-road
and behind railroad tracks. Her kids are cute,
all six, but shy. Pleez doan tayke muh warsher,
she begs. She starts to cry but Billy’s wise:
Ain’t no use to cry, he says. Can’t you make
no payment? Even a little of it?
No, Suh, she says. We h’ain’t got no mo-ney.
She don’t say why–doesn’t say why. We got
to take it, he says. C’mon, Slick
–he can’t remember my name–let’s see can
we move it out of the corner (it’s in
the living room–wonder what the TV
thinks of that) and I’ll slip the hand truck
‘neath it and you pick up on your side and
we’ll roll it out of here and mosey it
down the steps. It takes half an hour. Billy’s
sweating and I’m too small for the job but
a buck-sixty an hour’s pretty good pay
and I’m saving money for my first car.
I got a long way to go. Thank you, Ma’am,
he says. I’m sorry we had to do this.
I unnerstand, she sobs. Muh old man he
woulda paid you next’ week, she says. How’m I
gonna warsh all these youngun’s clothes? How jew
do ‘em before you bought this-here warsher,
he says. By hand, she says. In th’ tub.
So we drive away. Billy tells me how
he went to repossess a stereo
one time in a trailer park:The lady
who bought it wasn’t wearing no bra and
she says to me, If you don’t haul it ‘way
I’ll give you a hand job and I says, No,
you’ll give me some bloomer puddin’, and she
says, Well, How about a blow job and
I says, Good deal. Come back three weeks
later and hauled it away anyway.
Haw haw haw haw haw! I’m laughing with him
and I don’t know why because it’s not nice
though it is kind of funny, if you’re not
all religious about it. He turns on
the radio and Bill Withers is singing
Lean on Me. Goddamn! I like that song, sings
Billy. We’re doing ninety. The engine’s
loud and the radio’s loud and he shouts
to me, Slick, you ever had your cock sucked?
That’s kind of a personal question
so I say, Not exactly. I see my
mother in my head. Ooo-wee, he squeals, it’s
better ‘n sex. ‘Specially if she
swallers. The truck is yellow and the cab
is blue and Billy’s tie is red. I’m green
but I go along. Sex is pretty nice,
I say. You bet your ass it’s nice, he says.
I gotta stop at my house, he says. So
we pull into a trailer park, a nice one,
mobile homes with aluminum siding
and awnings and flowers. I meet his wife
and his baby. Cute kid. He takes a leak
but doesn’t ask me if I will. His wife
hands me a bottle of Mello Yello.
We leave and cruise back to the store. Billy
says, Good, as we get out of the cab. Lunch
time so I walk down to the drug store. My
sister works there part-time–money for college
–at the fountain. She wears a uniform
like Saturn Girl’s but she can’t read minds.
I ask Nita McFarland to serve me
so I don’t embarrass her, her brother
ordering from her, I mean. Hamburger.
Fries. Co’cola. Then I walk back to work
still a virgin but with experience,
none of that Today I became a man
junk but I did have a talk with Billy
about sex and he’s not a classmate like
Lamar and he’s not Mr. Smothers, our
Social Living teacher. He’s the closest
thing to my father and we never talk
about sex and never will but I know
that he knows what Billy knows but I long
to un-know what I know and I don’t
know shit from chinola but that’s life.
I didn’t know that this is what we are
until I became a working man but
no wonder so many people are poor,
forfeiting things that don’t belong to them
to those who don’t possess but only own.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Florida Review, Maryland Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2009).
Image from thisisrobert on flickr.
