Scalping The Lego King

I’ll tell you, Big Willy, because we work the roof together. And I got some time out here beneath the sky, with the stars. And me lying against the Earth with sand blowing into my hair. And my hair blowing over my face. I can’t move. Not an inch. Like I said: I got nothing but time. Nothing. And you’re my friend, Willy. My best friend, and I know I’m not your best friend, and that’s really okay, Willy. Really, it is. It’s okay. I still want you to know how it happened, before it does happen, ruining the weekend. Your big weekend. Okay. I want you to know, Wil. I want to explain. 

So.

Firstly, you should know: my father owned a grape farm that touched the beach. And he headed up a consortium of tired Democrats that were pulling away from society. Loner types. And my father was like that. He always wore black trousers in his vineyard. And always kept hate in his heart for Nixon even though he was too young to have voted against him. He would tell my mother we were living in the wrong decade and sigh loudly when Y2K talk came on the radio. My father often frowned. And drove a tow truck in months when the canopies were bare. Yet there was a happiness. In a way, his way, he was happy.

A tree grew in the middle of my father and mother’s house.

My mother was a professor, okay.

And things were falling off the house.

And we were stretched thin.

The house and the farm needed so much from all of us.

But we loved it.

We loved our father, our mother, and the tree at the center of things; loved the Batman sticker on the guitar case they kept their hash in; loved that they understood how much we needed the same backpacks that our friends had; loved the dog, Preacher. We were good little things, me and Jesse. Good children.

“It’s all over but the shouting,” my father would say, Nightly News settling down, the living room set ablaze with the familiar light of leftover television.

Craneflies hung in the windows outside.

My mother wiped her ashtrays clean with the evening’s dishes.

“They don’t do shit,” my sister might say.

“Language,” my mother would say, serious and smiling. And Jesse would nod like she heard my mother, then she’d pull down two sofa cushions, the color of turned milk, and practice her cheerleader splits on the living room floor.

I would yawn. I would smile.

My father would turn out the light. 

And our house sat, quiet, near the waterfront, moss taking the roof, ivy taking the eaves, winds skirting in off the coastline, and us: a family, lying down for sleep in our rough-looking house by the beach.  

***

I was fifteen.

The millennium had come.

It was the summer after my mother moved to another state to pursue her doctorate and my father explained to Jesse and me that divorces happen to people that still care for one another. That’s the summer we met Yanni Love Mellow. Her parents were members of the nudist colony that lived on the farm next door to us: The Almond Ranch. “Not what I would do,” my father would say. “But it’s a free country.”

The weather was nice, and Jesse and I were picking up trash on the beachhead when Yanni walked down from the wheatgrass at the edge of the colony’s farm to introduce herself. “My mother’s an architect,” she said. “My real mother.” Then she said, “My dad hit my mom, but he doesn’t hit his new wife.” Then, “I’ve lived in California for three years.” “Did you know a girl’s butthole opens just a little when she gives a blowjob?” “There are secret gargoyles on top of Mount Rushmore.”

Our bodies swelled in the sunshine as she talked and talked.

A soda can washed away.

“Gargoyles on Mount Rushmore,” repeated Jesse, nodding.

“You better believe it.”

Jesse started laughing, and I smiled but was hung up on the blowjob thing and couldn’t say much. My skateboard shoes were letting sand get to my ankles.

“You live at the nudist colony, but you’re not naked,” asked Jesse in a way that was more like a statement. She eyed Yanni’s little yellow shirt, her elastic shorts. 

“No,” said Yanni. “That’s the old people. You can smell them.”

“We do,” said Jesse for both of us. Then she looked at me, my buzzed head sweating down into my shirt, a bloom of dark fabric in the front and back. “We smell them all the time.”

   That night at dinner, even though she knew it was bullshit, Jesse explained to my father over white fish and steamed vegetables that there were tiny stone men on top of Mount Rushmore. “Gargoyles,” she said. And Dad looked up from the paper, his glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose. “No,” he said. “Just no.”

***

We spent the rest of that summer meeting Yanni Love Mellow in the flower fields a half-mile down the beach from our farm; long blonde fields of geraniums in even rows, serried against the hillside, carrying on like the endless aisles of a superstore. The flower farm belonged to a baseball announcer who made his way to the coast only once or twice a year. We didn’t bother the flowers. We liked them. They seemed to give everything we talked about a beauty. An importance.

Which is funny, you see.

Because that summer we were saying everything wrong for fun and on purpose.

The Weird Sentence Game.

It was as though we’d learned a new way of speaking.

Us together: experiencing and enjoying the power of randomness. The more esoteric the better. The goal was to aim yourself at the strangest possible sentence and was spurred by my sister’s love of Yanni’s made-up facts. It all started at a volleyball match in the old gym, when my sister reminded Yanni of the gargoyles atop Mount Rushmore. They started going back and forth. From there it couldn’t be stopped. Like a new heat, it crawled into every moment of our lives. And our lives were good then––no mom, but no matter––we’d been rebirthed with a new special energy. Everyone was looking at us sideways. Didn’t matter. We paid such little mind to the normies, because we were perfect to one another: me, Jesse, Yanni, with our peeing in the bushes, our turning over of sandwich boards on Ewing Street, and water balloons, water balloons, water balloons.

“Fucking kids,” people would say.

“Fuck it,” we’d yell, or something close to it.

The Weird Sentence Game informed every minute, every decision, every bit of our days. But. Still. Despite our raucous nature in the streets, we always played the game best in the flower fields. That is where we were at our best. With Yanni always winning, and Jesse and I, happy to let her have it. Because she was the best. She was the best and she knew it. The game went something like: us, laid back against the warm ground. Yanni would turn her head and say: John Wayne bowled a 130 in Prague last month/ Then me: Spiro Agnew loved Black women/ Yanni: The Powerpuff Girls have entered escrow/ Jesse: Arsenio Hall sleeps on a pile of Go-Gurts/ Yanni: Vulcanized rubber was made for Jewish legs/ Me again: Professor Xavier drowned his sister in a pool of Ovaltine/And Yanni, with a demon-like voice: God’s not dead, he’s just hiding.  

With that we’d roll onto our stomachs, laughing, bees zipping overhead and searching for something sweet. We’d hear the sounds of another barbeque ramping up from behind the tall hedges of the Almond Farm, and Yanni would shake her head as though things would never change. “I hate it there,” she’d say. “The old fuckers are all creepy.” And then she’d turn silent and look out toward the water, staring past the empty lifeguard stand with its dangling chain. And past the churning surf and the black rock like a broken nose. And past the blown-out oil tanker, drooling rust into the ocean.

That’s where Yanni would look.

As far as her eyes would allow for.

Where the night would turn sharp against the sea.     

And Jesse and I would look away from Yanni, because anytime the day was nearly done, we shared in her sorrow, her anxiousness. We’d find ourselves looking down the beach toward our own farm, the vines growing heavy with grapes in need of love.

Once. Just one time, at twilight, we saw our father out at the edge of the sand, Preacher by his side. He let the water run over his ankles for a time, and then, as if he’d remembered he left the stove top on, he ran back toward the house. And Jesse and I watched the dog alone on the beach. Then the dog followed the path back inside, and we watched the dogless beach for a while as the tide began to rise.

Yanni told us we’d pick up where we left off the following day.

“Smell you tomorrow,” she’d say.

And that was true.

It was.

But only for a short time.     

***

We lost Yanni after that summer.

Or she lost us.

The last time we sat in the flower field, her head was half-shaved, and she was holding her knees to her chest. She rocked back and forth like it was cold out. It wasn’t. Not to me.

Yanni yelled, “Lock up your daughters and release your sons to us.”

She yelled, “There’s a chemical cloud above the Fujian Province in China.”

She smiled and yelled, “Lick ya later.”

Then she walked back toward The Almond Ranch.  

And that was that.

There were rumors at our school that year. Boys that she’d taken two at a time in the Shopko parking lot. She’d impressed them. Opened them up. Did things to them they would tell their friends about, things they would not rediscover until much later in life. And like any young girl who teaches a young boy about his wants, she was punished.

That’s why she was sent to boarding school, the boys decided.

And it hurt me and Jesse that we didn’t know that part of her.

We thought Yanni knew only us.

We truly didn’t know she went with boys at night.

But we could imagine it.

I imagined it all: sweaty and jealous of everything those other boys got.

I think Jesse imagined it that way too: with Yanni sneaking out her bedroom window at The Almond Ranch and leaving her underwear in the backseat of a surfer’s jeep.

I think.

But I never asked her for sure.

The Almond Ranch was boarded up, and Yanni was gone. Jesse and I figured out the rest: we imagined Yanni moving to a faraway city to become an actress or an artist. A musician, we decided. We imagined her with a nose ring, tossing her head in the front row of a too-loud concert. We saw her pink hair that probably softened into the color of late season milkweed, the arms around her waist, and the hands against her back. And we could see her trying to survive it all. Maybe happy. Maybe. Maybe feeling small. Feeling dead. But she’d be okay. Because she could take a hit. She was like that. Growing stronger with each bad beat. And we imagined her doing the fun stuff too: the movie premiers and Doc Martens. The keys to her art gallery hanging from her spiky belt. And it would fill both Jesse and I with joyous and jealous wonder.

Yanni had lovers and enemies and dried lips and dark bruises.

Yanni.

And Jesse and I would lie next to each other against the soft earth, my hair regrown, our brown curls twined together. Our foreheads almost touching. Almost. We’d stare up at the bent tree in the middle of our house, admiring its detours, its browning leaves. We’d try and think of what sentence Yanni would say to win the day. What deep forgotten celebrity she would drag in from the dying yard of our brains and leave on our doorstep like a field mouse caught, killed, and dropped from the mouth of the family cat. What would she say? We asked ourselves constantly. Was it right? To want her? To need her? To know Yanni’s hair color? To know the size of her imaginary jeans? To be jealous of Yanni? Jealous of her world after she’d left us? We didn’t know. We didn’t know what to say. So we wouldn’t say anything. We would just lie there beneath the bent tree, our foreheads real close, until one of us fell asleep or our father came in from the rows.

***

Of course, after Yanni’s was gone and Jesse had left for a state school, my father––who owned a grape farm and wore black trousers––ran his tow truck off the road and into a way-too-steep ditch. The front of the truck smashed into the mouth of a culvert pipe. Of course, it was winter. Of course, he didn’t quite make it.

I identified the body on a Sunday night.

The lady who walked me in told me it was okay to cry.

Of course, he was lying on the silver table with his long, drawn face, bloated with the pressure of his drinking. He was a hippy, but he believed in God near the end of his life. I think because he believed in God near the beginning, the boomerang of faith. For a moment I saw him like the good little altar boy he started as: laid to rest at the edge of the metal pulpit, knuckles bloody, head twisted. He was a believer. A real believer. So I just smiled a small smile. And nodded. “Yes, yes,” I told her. “That’s him.”

***

How I ended up here, laying roof for people who call me by the wrong name.

It’s complicated.

And what’s worse, Big Willy, is that today I’ve made a mistake. I woke up in a house I didn’t know, in a city I don’t really understand. This city shuns me. It thinks I’m a junky-ass loser with no cash or steady job. The city tries to hurt me with its turnarounds and bus lanes. Its one-way streets that come out of nowhere and seem destined to end my stupid life. I can hardly keep my eyes open on Humboldt Boulevard. There’s a sharp pain in my forehead. Cement drying between my eyes. The car drifts every time my eyelids close. I’m wishing the street would fold and cut with my bullshit. But I’m stuck now.

Stuck. 

But at least you got my back, Big Willy.

You: my only friend on the job, always willing to bring down my belt when I’m too wasted to climb the ladder. You’re too kind to me, too patient while I straighten myself out. Always with an extra Dr. Pepper, a half-sandwich, that smile. 

I’m the worst, and the junk doesn’t help anything.

And.

Again, I’m late for work and just made a bonehead move.

Turned left on a red and right into this way-too-slow funeral procession.

We’re doing twenty-five in a thirty-five. The neighborhoods turning greener, nicer, as I move north. I’m two cars behind the hearse, right where a brother or close uncle should be. It’s embarrassing. I wish so badly I’d had the kid at Pep Boys change the brake pads. I sound wounded, like something dying.

Doesn’t matter.

A mile from Grand Street, I’ll turn off, and that’ll be that.

I’m not going anywhere fast, so I reach under my seat and pull out a quick rip.

I knew I dropped something yesterday.

Count was off, but it happens.

Here’s the bag.

Here I am.

Nothing more angelic than an untapped sack, you know? The act of holding it is the accomplishment, the World’s Fair in the palm of my hand. Procuring it was the adventure. A pickup off the green line. All the colors. A guy in a black hoodie is handed something by a woman in denim everything. He slides something across the hood, and the kid with the eyebrow cuts takes my money. In that moment, I am a frontiersman, claiming this little patch of dope as my own. I give thanks. I thank the chemicals, my life, the entire world for letting me be here. The finish line in a procession of dime dealers, middlemen, big timers, and cartel goons who allowed this gray bag to be flown, packaged, slung, stepped on, bought, stepped on, dropped and waiting under my seat for me. I thank everything that’s gone right.

Brake lights glow.

A quick stop, a man in a wheelchair wheeling across the walkway, holding his small dog. I’ve been chasing on foil to keep everything even. But I don’t have a lighter, so I bend below the dash and snort as much as I can, and now––

Now we’re talking.

Please, please, please, I think to myself.  And then I bloom, filling with the energy a flower must feel when the sun unfolds from behind the clouds. What a time to be alive, I think. Alive and in line at a dead man’s funeral. But that’s the way it goes. The cars brake again for a line of children in matching t-shirts who cross somewhere in front of the hearse. They’re park bound. To the park! Together!

My phone rings as I fill my other nostril.

“Josh Brolin spit in Carson Daily’s mouth last Thanksgiving,” says Jesse.

I cough.

“Patrick Stewart ate rose cake inside a funeral home,” I say.

Sometimes when I hear Jesse’s voice, I see my father. And then I can’t help it––I think of his body being pushed deeper into the ground––tectonic shifts, rocks bending beneath the dirt, everything smashing through his coffin and driving his soft body deep toward the center of the earth.

“How are you?” asks Jesse.

“I’m fine. I’m late for work,” I say.

“You sound bad,” she says. “You sound tired.”

“I am tired.”

“You don’t sound that kind of tired.”

“What kind of tired am I?” I ask, wishing immediately that I hadn’t.

A quarter mile from Grand Street.

“You sound the way you sound when things aren’t going great,” Jesse says, and I hear her taking deep breaths to keep from losing it on me. “You can come here. You can come stay with us.”

“For what?” I say, feeling impatient. I start to yell, “And you can let Mike accuse me of stealing his card! Stealing golf clubs! No thanks!”           

“Come,” she pleads.

“The fucker that Mike is!” Now I’m feeling good. Now I’m feeling like I can’t miss. “Jesse, he accused me!”

Jesse starts to cry.

I can hear her trying to stifle herself.

I breathe hard into the phone.

But she’s silent.

I turn off on Grand Street and pull the car over.

“What?” I ask, because I want her off my back, but I didn’t mean to mess her up like I did. I didn’t want her to feel pain. Yes, I used the credit card and pawned the five-wood and the fancy putter, but Mike had called me a fucking mooch loser to his golf friend, so fuck Mike Hammerlin, who–she knows–makes enough money. My sister knows that. She’s in the world of saving accounts now. Of down payments and Roth IRAs.

“What?” I repeat. “What? What! What.”

Her voice is now thin and soft, “Barbara Walters is…She’s coaching… She’s coaching the Olympic Archery Team is all. You should know that. If you know anything, you should know that…okay?”

“Okay,” I say, in a way that means I’m sorry.

I’m sorry. 

But she’s still crying, and I can hear it: with her hand over the receiver and her neck craned back.

“I’ll call you later,” I say. “Soon, I’ll call soon.”

Then I hang up.

And I leave my sister there in her kitchen.

To finish out my bag.

To start driving fast down Grand Street.  

***

I think it bears mentioning: Yanni Love Mellow once snuck Jesse and I into her bedroom at The Almond Ranch. She did. At night she snuck us across the yard while clouds blocked out the moon. I lifted Jesse into the window and, even though she was heavy to me, I didn’t grunt. Yanni’s room smelled like apricots. It was pink the way a small child’s might be, with posters of skydivers and snowboarders on the walls because—as Yanni explained—extreme sport athletes understood things about the impermanent nature of life and the impermanent nature of pain. We could all learn a thing or two from them.

“Live like Mat Hoffman,” said Yanni. “No one can hurt you but you.”

“Okay,” I said.

 “Okay,” said Jesse. “Cool…But you said you had something epic.”

 “Yes!” said Yanni. “Yes, this way.”

Yanni walked us into the small bathroom connected to her pink bedroom by a sliding door. No locks. I remember there were no locks. She explained the bathroom was hers and hers alone, but I counted no less than six toothbrushes in the cup next to the soap dispenser. Everything reeked of bleach. It tasted like bleach. I longed for her bedroom as the three of us crouched on the shower rug.

Hushing her voice, Yanni said, “Don’t scream.”

I nodded, listening for adult voices in the hallway.

Jesse nodded too.

We would not scream.

Then Yanni pulled back the shower curtain to reveal two bright orange lobsters, dabbling around in inch-deep water, their claws banded as though they might be capable of doing dangerous things.

“They’re from Maine,” Yanni whispered. “I’ve been feeding them watermelon, keeping them safe from the freaks.”

The fatter lobster played at the deep end of the tub. It scratched its claws over the drain stopper and lifted its tail up and down. The thinner of the two propped itself up at the far end of the tub and gazed back at us, antennas searching, its gentle eyes like the seeds of a dragon fruit.

“We’re taking them to the ocean,” Yanni said. Her head began to bob sweetly. “This is Allen Greenspan II, and this is Lucifer, and we’re taking them to the ocean.”

“Yes,” my sister said, pushing her curls back from her forehead.

I just nodded.

And then we were on the beach, in the dark.

Yanni pulled her pajama shirt over her head and waded into the shallows. I looked at Jesse to see if we should take off our shirts and follow, but she just stood there, watching. The black water rose against Yanni’s stomach, a lobster in each of her hands, the clip of her bra shining in the blackness.     

Yanni gently pushed the lobsters’ tails toward the white surf. They disappeared.

Then she turned back to us and yelled over the crash of the ocean, “The Marlboro Man rode Allen Greenspan II and Lucifer all the way to heaven. He rode them all the way home.” 

***

So, here’s what happens, Big Willy.

I fall right off this roof. Right off.

You scream, and that scares me more than anything.

Oh lord, it’s a scene. And I’m sorry about that.

 I’m still screwin’ it all up.

 But it’s not all bad. No.

‘Cause now I’m in the hospital.

This bright place: Saint Joseph’s Hospital.

My phone plugged in behind the bed and ringing loudly.

It’s Jesse, but I do not answer.

Jesse texts: Call me.

Jesse texts: I need to talk to u.

She texts: I’m not mad I jus need u to call me forreal. Please.

I’m feeling good. Inasmuch as I can be. This hospital has an open kitchen, willing to feed us at any hour if we’re willing to eat. The whole place has a nice little minimum-security prison vibe. The orderlies all have faces like sourdough bread and voices like morning radio DJs. Alicia, with the big engagement ring, is kind to me.

“You’re a goof,” she says, smiling as she changes out my Methadone drip.

“I’m trying,” I say.

And I am.

Dried out. Drying out.

“You should answer your phone,” Alicia says. The red vitals on my heart monitor blink and chirp. “Some people don’t get phone calls anymore.”

 I stare out the window, trying to affect some deep meditation on the long unshaped years that brought me to this place; the mornings when I wasn’t able to find my car; the strange borderlands I was willing to venture to in hopes of scoring the best dope; the dog I hit and left in that yard off Homan. But none of it sticks. It’s like a dream of a movie I once read the plot for on my cell phone. It’s nothing real. And I feel like not a real thing for having lived it. I’m almost forty years old, staring at an empty golf course out my hospital window as sandpipers and meadowlarks and seagulls all dive at something dead in the sand trap.

My stomach rumbles, and I raise my IV-less arm to scratch my nose.

“How do you know it’s not a dealer waiting in the parking lot for me?” I ask.

“I don’t,” says Alicia.

 “That’s right,” I say. “You don’t know.”

***

I leave the hospital with a goody bag.

A postbiotic face spray.

A hemp toothbrush.

 A listing of all N.A. and A.A. meetings throughout the city.

I have the doctors’ cards.

 And the notebook that the therapist there wanted me to use to write down my day-to-day thoughts. I didn’t write much: King Kong might be HIV positive/ Today my legs feel like police sirens/ I am a mouse who is lost at a techno show/ Call Jesse/ Call Jesse/ Asshole/

I call Jesse as I wait for the bus.

The sky is still hungover from the previous night’s storm.

I tell her I’m strong.

 Feeling good.

Clean for a month but taking it one hour at a time.

I tell her I should, could, and, maybe one day, will turn this all around. Be better.

And she does not cry.

 But she does tell me she wants me to have a good life.Then she pauses.

Like it’s bad.

 And we say nothing to each other while I read the bus bench in front of me. A five-thousand-dollar timeshare opportunity is only a phone call away. I watch a homeless guy wash the front window of an Escalade that’s stopped at a red light. He holds a newspaper in one hand and a spray bottle in the other.

I ask Jesse, what’s up.

I tell her it feels different this time.

She laughs, but not in a mean way.

She says she has something crazy to tell me but doesn’t want to upset me if I’m feeling so good. She says that it’s nothing worth flipping my lid over, that it’s even stupid to bring up, but that she doesn’t want me finding out some other way. She says they found a body, the bones of a teenager or young adult woman, buried in the yard of the house that we used to know as The Almond Ranch.

She says it must be Yanni Love Mellow.

She says who else can it be.

I tell her that’s crazy. Crazy.

And I sit back on the bench, legs weak, teeth chattering.

I tell her I have a job interview lined up this afternoon and that I’ll call her later.

***

Big Willy.

To tell it honestly: three months out from Saint Joseph’s, I will be fully trashed.

Off the wagon.

Yanni’s death—it’ll be just a little too much for me. Yes, sure, they’ll arrest someone in Houston that used to live at The Almond Ranch. Some guy who always worked the grill when they barbecued and often played poker with Yanni’s father after the children were asleep. But Yanni will still be gone. No art shows or Doc Martens. No more imagining her life on some glorious track running parallel to my own.

It’ll all weigh on me.

But you’ll do me a solid.

Knowing I’m going through a tough bit, you’ll invite me to the bachelor party. And I’ll be driving fast on some American highway, pointed toward Arizona, the most perfect dope I’ve been able to score rolling through my wide-open veins. I’ll have Flonase and Ketamine and Raspberry Hash in my suitcase. Feeling good, and why not?  Why not pull over where the dells end and smoke something? Yes. Yes, please. I’ll stop off at the car lot where the trucks sink into the dirt, and I’ll chug something fiery. I’ll do that. I will do what I want, when I want, because I will think it’s unfair that we put people in places and just expect them to stay alive. I’ll think it’s just wrong.  

And then I’ll pull up to Lake Powell and tell you congratulations.

“She’s one lucky girl,” I’ll say. “Does she know what she’s in for?”

What a long way we’ve come from laying shingle on the East Side.

Well, at least how far you’ve come. You’ll have started at that office downtown, and I’ll still be laying roof back in the city. Doesn’t matter.            

I’ll give you that half-hug thing we used to do on the job and ask which room’s mine.

A houseboat.

A whole damn houseboat.

What a grand way to see you off, Big Willy.

Snort this.

Smoke this.

Take your clothes off and then mine.

I’m joking. I am.

That abraded sense of brotherhood will fall into place; it’ll be a long weekend.

We’ll party.

Nerf footballs and Fireball shots. This will be how I introduce myself to your friends. And they’ll go easy on me. They’ll know I’m not quite right. And that first night, I will not sleep. I’ll break out the good stuff and head topside: I’ll stare at the black water and not be able to stop thinking of Yanni’s molded bones, of her long-haired father and too-young second mother, and my father’s truck in the air, and his body on the slab. My bad. My bad, buddy.

Your boys will look at one another.

They’ll wonder what my deal is.

Big Willy, who the fuck is this bro?

It won’t be great.

But.

Then.

The next day, you’ll say, “You got this,” when I jump from Eagle Rock.

We’ll show everyone I can be chill.

I’ll catch a fish off the back of the boat. I’ll cook it up.    

And when it’s dark, and the fraternity of bats have begun circling, you’ll ask, “Did you really sell your brother-in-law’s golf clubs? That’s so funny. Crazy but funny.”

And I’ll look away, to the smooth rock and kayak paddles abandoned on the cliff face.

“Are you sure you’re all good?” you’ll ask, edging toward me. The tiny little trees on the mountain will bend and shake and huddle together: they’ll do whatever it takes to survive. And I’ll look at you but not speak. “Dude?” Your voice will grow loud. “Dude. Dude. Dude,” you’ll repeat.

 I’ll just blink for a while and then shake my head.

“Can I use your phone?” I’ll ask.

“Yes,” you’ll say. “Whatever you want.”

“I get no service here.”

“It’s cool.” You’ll smile. “Call your people.”

***

I’ll sneak away and call Jesse where the phone works.

Up there on the top of big red cliffs.

You and all the boys will be down below, encircling the fire, slapping each other’s chests to see who’s the most solid. We’ll be landbound by then, at the barbeque pit. You’ll be ready for night meat, for more drinks. You won’t see me above, ready for sleep. I’ll barely be able to keep my eyes open. I’ll be tired. Real tired. I’ll think the ground is soft, at least for now. I’ll lie back and smell the dirt. And then the phone will ring, and Jesse will answer. Or she won’t. Then maybe I’ll explain myself for the millionth time. And she’ll say, “You sound tired.” She’ll say, “I’ll come get you.” But I’ll be asleep by then, faded off, the moon and the rocks all around me lying silent. It’ll be a dream at first, and everyone will be there: Yanni, Jesse, Preacher, Dad, even Mom. You’ll be there, too, in a way. Everyone I ever needed to be there will be there, standing around me, concerned and quiet as my chest rises and falls and rises and falls and does not rise again. Maybe Yanni will say a few words. She was always the best with words, their order, how they should sound. Yes. Jesse will kick a scorpion away from my head, and everyone will laugh, I hope, at the beauty and futility of this gesture. It’ll be a nice thing for me. A nice, nice thing.

And I’m sorry for all this ahead of time.

I am.   

This is supposed to be your Big Willy Bachelor Weekend!

And I’ll just ruin it.

You: this dude who was only ever cool to me, inviting me to come hang because you know how much I love hanging, worried I have no friends. And me: making everything lame with my dying bullshit, busting out before we can even get into the acid, and making your boys get out the flashlights and flares to go find that burner dude that smells too much like an ashtray and only comes alive for a few minutes at a time. It sucks. And I’m–

I’m just sorry this is what I do.

But.

Please.

Even though it’ll ruin the night.

And the bachelor party.

Casting this big dumb cloud of sadness over the wedding.

Even though I’m heavier than I look.

Can you–

I mean, if you can.

Please, will you fetch my body from the big red rocks at the top of the big red cliffs.

And tell Jesse I tried.

Please.

For me, Wil.

My friend.

Find her at the funeral. She’ll be there. All broken up. Find her, and tell her that there are, from time-to-time, things that will trip someone up in a bad way. You can do that. You’re Big Willy! Just smile. A big smile, okay? Just tell her I once told you that Harry Connick Jr. was caught scalping the Lego King and…and also…will you tell her that he was sent to Lego Jail for his crimes.

Okay.

Yes.

She’ll be by the fountain in the only black dress she owns.

She will be.

Yes, that’ll work.

It’ll be good.

Scalping the Lego King.

She’ll know what it all means.

Sam Berman is a short story writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois. He now works with Mrs. Nancy, Rueben, Allen Pete, Patrick, and, of course, The Mendota Kid himself: Andrew Troupis. They are terrific coworkers. He has had his work published in D.F.L. Lit, Maudlin House, The Masters Review, Hobart, Illuminations, HAD, The Fourth River, Smokelong Quarterly, and recently won Forever Magazine’s Unconventional Love Stories competition. He was selected as runner-up in The Kenyon Review’s 2022 Non-Fiction Competition, the 2022 Halifax Ranch prize and the 2022 ILS Fiction Prize. He has forthcoming work in Expat Press, Craft Magazine, and D.F.L Lit, among others.