Troublemaker

Introduction

An Interview with the Author

Excerpts:
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  • Excerpt One: "Colorado Springs"
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  • Excerpt Two: From Chapter One
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  • Excerpt Three: From Chapter Two
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  • Excerpt Four: From Chapter Two

    Letter From the Editor

    Editorial: Having Our Say

    New Releases

    Authors On Tour

    Feedback

    Ordering

    Gay/Lesbian/Feminist Bookstores Around the Country

    The Mostly Unfabulous Homepage of Ethan Green

     




    Troublemaker Excerpt Four: From Chapter Two

    By Brian Pera
    From Troublemaker


    Take a look at yourself the doctor said. See what you find. Something like that. By the time I made it out of the hospital it was only partly I remembered what he said. More than anything I remembered the needle in my back; remembered laying there like a dead thing can’t feel nothing but what should feel like pain. Getting out of the hospital, reeling out; remember that. Aunt Edna rushing after me: "Well let me see what they told you."

    "Look at myself," I answered, "and this," which point I handed her the piece of paper said I got the right to some pills.

    "So if you don’t mind let’s go get some," I said, and we done. Aunt Edna chatted up the clerk over the counter, kept him from getting me them pills sooner, and meanwhile me tapping my fingers noisy on the Formica like to say ain’t you forgetting. But she got to go on about how she must keep him in business, what with three sons of her own always needing something in a bottle and now this here, her nephew.

    "You’re supposed to take them with a glass of water," she told me out in the car as I popped two of them pills into my mouth.

    But I "Got spit," I said, "and a good imagination," on account of I done waited long enough.

    Then she took me to her house and made a pallet on the floor for me to lay on, shut the shades and closed the door on the noise her kids was making in the other room. I could feel it already – feel nothing, that is – which is what I guess the pills was for, or anyhow it was fine by me either. Remember that, too; driftin off to sleep like I’s a leaf on the river, thinking every time I opened a slit, This here’s a coffin, this room – dark and quiet and sleep.

    Then on back to Mojo’s the very next day, minute I come to.

    "I need to get back," I told Edna, and she drove me and them pills downtown.

    She said it was too hot for me to ever get better, too stuffy in that place I lived, what with no open windows and plenty of sunlight, middle of a drought.

    "You shouldn’t go back there," she said. Course she didn’t think I should of gone in the first place. But my mind was too hazy to think out any other options. I kind of listed my choices inside my head, like go to my ma’s in Nebraska – like she’d have me – or stay with Edna and her three kids – another mouth to feed. I made the list but all the parts kept slipping down before I could finish with it, I couldn’t tell one or the other from which.

    She left me on the corner and drove off, too scared to come in I guess, or she didn’t want to get out from her cool car into the heat. Inside’s where I thought to check out Dan and could he drive me over to Nana’s. Yeah, that’s it; Thought about it half the day, sitting in there staring at the window like I could open it if I wanted to, before I finally gone up and asked him for the ride. Popping the pills before he come around with the El Camino – one, two. Put them under my tongue to see if I could melt the plastic coating before I just decided, Oh swallow them, for crying out loud.

    Feeling better, I remember, feeling I weren’t feeling a thing at all, didn’t matter what happened next, I could do any damn thing I wanted. That was how I felt anyways; cause like I said, might be I could do lots but getting into Nana’s house later weren’t so easy. No, she turned me away, or disappeared from the doorway, or she weren’t never there. Could be she weren’t never there. Dan drove me back to Mojo’s, every once in a while give a pet to his bird on the feathers just above its beak. I watched myself in the rearview mirror, tried to really look; listened to how on the radio they was saying it’s the hottest ever in Memphis, ever in recorded history. And I thought, If you couldn’t feel it you’d never know by the look of things. But maybe you could tell at the river, cause like they said on the radio, Old Miss was so low the ships couldn’t get through, all travel standstill.

    Back at Mojo’s, I’s set to leave for somewhere, anywhere I could think up, and knowed I better think it up quick on account of I ain’t paid my rent. After a few minutes, I got to thinking I could go to Buford, Arkansas, to see my mother's grandmama. Course I could. She was sitting up on top of that hill, empty house all to herself. Plenty of rooms towards the back what she never got to. I could stay in one of them, out of her way. My ma told me how her property’s going all to hell – overgrown grass, everything rusted out, the gravel near gone from the drive, carried off by cars and trucks coming through and time, I guess. Sure, I could go live with her and keep up her land, get it looking back the way it used to. I could help her out around the house, maybe screw in lightbulbs or reach things she couldn’t, make myself handy just somehow. I wouldn’t never be sick or miserable, cause I’d have me a place to stay and room to unwind. In Buford things’d be all around better.

    Once I decided that’s where I’s headed, I spent my time figuring how I would get there, how to make the three-hour drive: across the Hernando-Desoto Bridge, through West Memphis, Jonesboro, Hoxie, Cherokee. And Buford, long last. Thought, Bus ride, but weren’t no fare I could pay for; Somebody to drive me, but I didn’t know nobody got a car would make it that far or care to.

    Course with not much choice I ended up at the river, staring across to the West Memphis bank with al kinds of crazy thoughts in my head. I asked everybody I could think to: "You got a rowboat" or "Say, how long you reckon it takes to swim across the Mississippi?" And when nobody could answer I walked the few blocks over from Mojo’s back to the cobblestones against the bank, held my thumb up front of my face, tried to somehow measure the distance and time by sight.

    I seen it a dozen times before but never thought about going on the Mississippi Queen, riverboat red, white and fancy you could pay to take you up a stretch and back down the river. Until one day there I was sitting on the cobblestones, watching the boats go back and forth, and the peoples lined up along the pier to board, little kids all excited practically peeing in their pants to get on. That’s when I thought about tricking and paying to ride the Queen myself; about jumping off midstream and swimming the rest of the distance to the West Memphis shore.

    Once it got in my head weren’t nothing else I could think about. Down Beale Street and into Schwab’s dimestore, dusted up and racked hidden in a corner, I found a ten-cent postcard of the Mississippi Queen out middle in the river, red waterwheel turning on skinny falls from its spokes. Stole that and carried it around in my back pocket to the point it got chewed up, faded, and beat at the edges like a memory – like already I swum through the river and took it with me. Whenever I needed, I pulled that picture out and squinted my eyes at it until it like to fuzz near into three dimensions, so’s before too long it seemed just as real as anything else.

    More summer heat, then Aunt Edna showed at my curb again, white-gold sunlight caught up in her car and blinding, her sitting cool as cucumbers inside with the AC. "I think you better talk to your mama," she come all that way to say. Got this look on her face like I better listen up or something no good was set to go, like things could get worse. Might be I’d of got as worried about it as she was, but since them pills she got me’d left the bottle for good I been tipping drinks instead. I weren’t feeling so bad that I could tell.

    "Well, I can’t," I told her, "on account of I can’t pay for the long distance."

    But Edna said that weren’t no trouble at all; why, I could come on over to her house out East Memphis, phone from there, she herself would pay for the call. She was willing to so’s I might see how important it was to finally talk to my ma who after all been trying weeks to track me down or so peoples said. I couldn’t figure that one – she been the one kicked me out but it was I’s the one’s running away like.

    I weren’t keen on going to Edna’s again, its being a weekend and all and her husband Ike sure to be there. He bothered me, that one – made me feel I’s supposed to say something, whereas turned out whatever I said was the wrong thing, like I been tricked. Bothered me the way he stood around got his hands in his pockets, all stern and dull quiet, and somewheres in their living room that big oil painting of a mountain range, lopsided thing trapped by four sides. He done it way back when, when he’s in college. Him and Edna the both of them stood around and always soon enough they’d say a bit about he really was some kind of a painter once, a real arteest – said fancy – and then something about how whatever job he’s working now’s just a temporary thing, "Understand." Made me feel silly, like we’s all kids playacting at being grown up.

    Still I finally said I’d come over to make the call and I can’t say how come. It just struck me, I guess, that Edna wouldn’t never let me be less I did.

     

    Copyright © 2000 Brian Pera.

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