Shards

John Bennett

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TORNADO EYES

He rode into town in his Mustang and began to frequent the Flying J Tavern. He was a man of few words. Women found him attractive. He had a quiet energy that at any moment might blow up in your face.

Yes, yes—ladies liked him a lot. They longed to unzip for that zipper-tongued devil. They wanted those tanned cowboy fingers to unhook their bra while they looked on in awe as his pedestal rose to the sky. The strong silent type.

He made other men restless. They thought they should fight him, but they didn’t know where to start in. Just walk up and hit him? From behind, from the front, in the face, in the back, in the belly? I mean—what the hell! Should they call him outside first? What do you say to a man who won’t talk? Leave alone how do you fight him.

Rumor had it he’d been married once, to a sweet thing down in Laredo, and that she left him for a fast-talking salesman. But no one knew for certain. He was the mystery man with the battened-down hatch, a stone statue who sat at the bar until closing. He had tornado eyes that blew you to pieces.

Women fucked their men harder after being around him, and men dreamed of the day when he’d leave again. Meanwhile, time kept on passing.

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BEING IN LOVE MAKES YOU THAT WAY

Time after time,
I tell myself that I’m,
so lucky to be loving you.

That’s how a song begins. Someone in love sits down at a table and writes himself into the top twenty.

Being in love makes you that way. King and Queen for a day, immortal for a little bit longer. Sovereigns of the castle, throned to the kingdom.

Is it all smoke and mirrors? Who throws the switch that lights up the city? Where does electricity come from? Zeus and his lightning bolts, off on a spree - chances of getting hit are one in a million. Chances of surviving are six trillion to three.

*  *  *

Let me get down to brass tacks. Take off the kid gloves and the chrome-plated armor. Lift the biker-boy visor and steal your heart with a wink.

I saw a movie last night full of faggots and cops. I saw it alone on the couch over supper. I used to share this routine with my loved one, but she rode off with some knight in bright armor. Blackout in the city of love. Misery running the dark streets of my heart like a pack of wild dogs. The ineffable pain of lost love.

In the movie the cop has a stroke, and the faggot (a drag queen) takes him under her wing. It’s a love/hate situation, platonic, ferocious, deep, sexless and good. It’s friendship.

Love is not friendship. Love is a longing to get back where we came from or up ahead where we’re going. Love is admitting that life breaks your back. Love is a hole to crawl into, a miscue, a discard, a cold calculation. Love is a many splendid thing.

The cop is a hero. Or was, until the stroke brought him down. He used to dance tango with an uptown mulatto who gave him sex for small favors. He was stylin’. But after the stroke, when his lip drooped and he drooled down his chin, she stopped coming around, this mulatto. That’s when the drag queen showed up. And:

Enter Chicita!

Another mulatto, a beauty straight from the dance hall of spaz cop’s recent past. She’s loved him from day one, our Chicita, but he was too stylin’ to notice. She makes her move, comes to visit, but he drives her away. It’s hard, being a hero who drools down his chin.

Let’s make a long story short. This second mulatto loves spaz cop for invisible reasons. She’s not thrown off by his drool and his limp. She makes another pass and snuggles in for the long run.

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My heart sinks like a stone. The old wound opens up, the longing, the need. It’s an inner condition, this love thing. A song that needs singing. I open my mouth, and out comes a dry raspy sound. I look off in the shadows, and see the Angel of Death’s come a courting.

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SOMETHING NEW AT NOON

Something new at noon. A nubile nightmare while napping. A collapse on the couch after lunch. Just too much going on, what with car payments and kids off the deep end. What with a wife who’s grown suspiciously distant. What with that lump on the side of your neck. What with the news on the blaring tv. What with the ice cubes that melt in the drink that’s not working.

Nothing is working. Nothing is panning out. It’s all changing too fast now. You’re light-years behind. But then almost everyone is. People stumble and falter by the time they hit twenty. Kids of 14 are in charge of the world. There’s no way to keep up. It used to be one generation would take over from another, but now the bottom half of a generation takes over from the top half and there’s no end in sight.

Soon new-born babies will disown their mothers who will be no older than 10. The future - a geriatric ward overflowing with 15-year-olds.

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One of those starts in your sleep and you’re sitting bolt-upright. A laugh track is filling the room. You look down at your watch but can’t see without glasses. You don’t know where they got to. You call out to your wife but no answer. You go into the kitchen and there’s bubbling stew on the stove top. In the kids’ room the beds are both made. There’s no note.

You go out on the porch in your socks. The street’s dead. You go back into the house and the laugh track from the tv is still going, but the screen has gone blue. You pick up the phone and stare down at the thing. The sun sets in the sky.

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A SECRET DOCUMENT
TO BE HANDED OVER TO THE ENEMY
THE MOMENT I CASH IN MY CHIPS

Gridlock in the alligator patch. Watermelons off a truck bed, bashed on
a curved stretch of blacktop. Florida, South Carolina—things south tend to get squirrely. Check out Argentina if you really want trouble. Beached whales in an alley. Side-heaving dilemma. Metered air, two bits for a lung-full. Side show with no takers. An empty tent full of freaks. A beggar on the outskirts of Cleveland, his hands in his baggy pants pockets, taking warmth where he finds it, not a thought in his head. And the band plays on.

Anchored in time. In Frisco, New Orleans and Munich. In a high-mountain valley where it snows 8 feet in the winter and the wind howls every spring. On a sand lot in Long Island. A continuum of squiggly lines.

Girded for war at age 60, a tin can full of pencils and spiders, reams of paper piled all over the place. Scratch marks and rends. An axe scar on my forehead where the enemy once struck a blow. Plates in my knee caps, age etched in my skin. The air thick with betrayal, like a stench coming out of the walls. The whole thing hemmed in by forbearance.

God knows that I’ve tried. God knows if I’ve failed. God knows I’m pumping hard down the homestretch. God knows that I’m ready to die and the last fetter is about to be broken.

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Copyright © John Bennett 2000

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