Dry County Read online

  I run to the door and throw it open. “Hey!” I yell at the guy standing by the controls to the lift.

  He’s as big as the truck. Got a big bald head white as the sun. He kinda gives me a side-eye glance but keeps working the levers.

  The other guy comes around the side of the truck. He’s ratty, with a tiny mouth and fucked-up front teeth that pinch together like an ax-head.

  He says, “Repossessed, man.”

  “Fuck that. Put my car down.”

  He holds up a piece of paper. “You Brian Harten?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Been repossessed, man.”

  I take the paper from him and wipe my ass with it and throw it on the ground.

  “What do you think of that?” I say.

  “C’mon, man, I ain’t even had breakfast yet,” the little rat says.

  The big guy tells him, “I said you shoulda got something with me at McDonald’s.”

  The little rat turns to him. “I done told you, man, I’m off the animals. For good.”

  “Shoulda got a egg and cheese biscuit, then.”

  “Animals and animal products, man. I’m off them.”

  “You can’t be a vegan in this town,” the big guy says.

  “Bullshit I can’t.”

  “What are you gonna do, live on nuts and berries and shit?”

  “Put my fucking car down!” I yell. I step toward the little guy.

  “Whoa, Dude-in-His-Boxers,” he says, “just back up. You want to yell at someone, get on the phone and yell at your creditors. We can’t help you.” He turns to the big guy. “And you, man—you don’t even know what you’re talking about. You read that book I give you?”

  “I ain’t reading a fucking book, man. I didn’t read books when they made us read books. And if I was gonna read a book, it wouldn’t be a book about fucking vegans and shit.”

  “The animals, man.”

  “Fuck the animals, man.”

  “I can pay you guys,” I say. “Twenty bucks each. Just tell them you couldn’t find me.”

  “Can’t do it, buddy.”

  “Thirty bucks each.”

  “Nope. Sorry. You should go call whoever you gotta call. We gotta take the car.”

  I jab a finger into the rat’s scrawny shoulder. “You’re not listening to me, asshole. I need that car.”

  He turns to me and puts his little face in mine, his nasty teeth sticking out from under his top lip. “Don’t touch me again. Ain’t gonna be a second warning.”

  I step back and swing on him. I don’t know why. Fucking dumb. I’m out here, one pair of boxer shorts between my bare dick and the whole world, and I swing on him.

  I get him in the face, but it hurts my hand more than it hurts him, and then he turns into Jason Bourne all the sudden. Hits me three times before I can blink, then sweeps my legs and drops me to the pavement. Gives me one more punch in the face to get the point across.

  I cover up. He backs off and calls me a shithead.

  The big guy is laughing his ass off.

  They load into the truck. The little guy is rubbing his knuckles and cussing me, and the big guy is saying, “Kung Tofu, my man!”

  They drive off, and I watch my car disappear down the street.

  I get up. Put a hand to my nose. My face feels like it’s blowing up like a balloon. Blood drips down on my hairy white belly. My leg is scraped where I hit the pavement.

  “Fuck.”

  I turn around to limp back inside, and every neighbor I have is peeking out their blinds. I flip off all of them and go to my door.

  Locked.

  I cuss that door like it fucked my wife.

  God. Damn. It. All.

  I hobble around to the back of the apartments. My patio gate is locked, so I stand on the air-conditioning unit and pull myself over, scrapping my leg in the process.

  Please, Jesus. Let the sliding glass door—

  It’s locked.

  Cocksucker. Cock-fucking-sucker.

  I unlock the patio gate and walk around to Erikson’s apartment and knock.

  He comes to the door, and I can smell weed and bacon behind him. He’s dressed like he’s going somewhere, but he never leaves the apartments, so I guess he’s just up and at ’em early this morning.

  “Seen what happened,” he says.

  “Yeah, listen—”

  “Got your ass kicked.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That ol’ boy was small, but he sure had some moves on him.”

  “I’m locked out of my apartment.”

  He looks me up and down and nods. He’s got the apartment keys on his belt. “Let’s go,” he says.

  As I follow him to my door, he says, “Repossessed your ride, huh?”

  “I reckon.”

  “That mean you’re gonna have trouble making rent?”

  “No.”

  He shoots me a look over his shoulder.

  “Hey, man,” I tell him, “I pay you when the rent is due. ’Til then, you ain’t got any right to hassle me about it.”

  We get to my door, and he unlocks it. “Front-door service,” he says.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He looks at the blood smeared across my gut. “That little feller sure whooped your ass.”

  I go inside and hop in the shower. They took my fucking car. I stick my head under the water.

  Now what?

  Ray. I need to go see Ray. He can loan me the cash.

  After I check my face to make sure my nose ain’t broke, I get dressed and rush out the door.

  As I cut through the town square, past the courthouse and Pickett’s, my nose still hurts. I keep touching it, afraid it’s going to start bleeding again. But it’s fine. Just hurts.

  Stock.

  I hate this town.

  No, that ain’t true. I don’t hate it. I like it just fine. I just wish the assholes who run things around here would give me a break.

  I get to the sidewalk that runs up School Hill Road and start climbing it. Fucker is steep. I ain’t walked it since I was a kid. Used to go down to Pickett’s to play Pac-Man in the foyer. Got busted shoplifting a Coke there once. Stupid thing to do. Lady let me go, though. She was pretty nice.

  I pass through a little neighborhood. Nice houses, with signs in the yards that either read, TRUMP: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN or TED CRUZ 2016. Don’t see any Hillary or Bernie signs—not in this neighborhood, anyway—but just about every yard has a sign that reads, KEEP VAN BUREN COUNTY DRY.

  Assholes. What happened to freedom in America, man? These people don’t give a shit about drinking. Not really. Half the people in this town have beer sitting in their fridge right now. These “Keep the County Dry” assholes just want to tell other people what to do. They don’t care who they hurt. It’s taken me six months just to get the quorum court to agree to have a vote on whether to put the measure on a special ballot.

  Fucking local preachers fought me every step. Weatherford, that asshole from First Baptist, he’s the main one. It’s pathetic. Pathetic. You’re telling me that your whole damn mission in life is to make sure other people can’t buy a drink in town? Jesus turned water into wine, didn’t he? I brought that up at the last city council meeting. Weatherford said the wine was really just unfermented grape juice. Now how the fuck can he know that? JC’s wine was pinot fucking noir, for all Richard Weatherford knows.

  Top of the hill, I turn onto Ray’s road. He’s got a small house, a front yard, one tree. I could live in a place like this if we get the store up and going. Nothing fancy, not at first. That’s how people screw up. Like all the rock stars and rappers and stuff. They get some money, and then they blow it all like idiots. Not me. I’m just gonna get me a little house with a yard to start out.

  I knock on his door.

  Takes a minute, but Ray opens up and looks surprised. “Hey, man . . .”

  “They repossessed my car, dude.”
/>   “What?”

  “Guys came by this a.m. and hauled it off.”

  “Shit.”

  He walks outside, which is kind of funny. Usually we just go inside. Don’t think we’ve ever walked around his yard before, but that’s what he does. Hands in the back pockets of his jeans, hair shoved under a bandana, he looks around his property like he’s never seen it before.

  “You think you could spot me the cash to get it back?” I ask. “I need some wheels to run around and do the shit we need to do before the vote. I’ll pay you back once the cash gets freed up.”

  He takes a breath. “Yeah, listen, Brian, I’ve been thinking. Me and Lacy been talking. I think maybe . . . I think maybe the store ain’t gonna happen.”

  I just stare at him for a minute before I can think to say, “What are you talking about?”

  He lifts his hand and kinda gestures at everything all at once. “Dude, this town ain’t ready for a liquor store. We were talking last night, and Lacy made the point, she said, ‘You know, maybe in ten years, maybe in five, the town will be ready. But not now.’ I think that’s true. Just think about how everybody has lost their shit over this thing. I mean, they already made all these ‘Keep the County Dry’ signs, and that was just to stop the special ballot from happening. And now they’re talking like we might have to wait until the general election in November to put it in the ballot? November, man. They could keep putting this off forever. We moved too quick on this thing. Should have took it slower.”

  I walk toward him. “Dude, what are you doing?”

  “What? Nothing. I’m just—”

  “Ray, don’t do this, man. All the money I got is tied up in this store. Hell, all the money I don’t got is tied up in this store. They fucking hauled off my car, man. I got nothing. You know what I’m saying? If we don’t get this store opened, I got nothing.”

  He can’t even look at me. Stares at the ground like a pussy. “I’m sorry, Brian. I’m sorry as hell. If this thing would’ve come together the way we thought it was going to, we’d be in there already. And I loved the idea of having a place. You know I did.”

  “Did? Dude, don’t talk like it’s already over.”

  He takes a deep breath. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Brian, but I’m gonna need to back out.”

  “Is this Lacy talking? Get her out here.” I start toward the house. “Let me talk to her.”

  “She ain’t here, man.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Work.”

  “Let’s go inside and talk about this.”

  “I can’t. The kids are asleep.”

  I jab my thumb at my heart. “I got kids, too, Ray. I got kids, too. What about my kids?”

  He lowers his head like he’s just trying to wait out the storm, like I’m his alcoholic father or something. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t have anything left to say. All he wants is for me to leave so he can go back inside.

  “Ray . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Brian. I’m sorry as hell. I know how much this means to you.”

  “What are you going to do, man? Just keep working at the cement place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You hate it.”

  “No, I don’t,” he says. “I liked the idea of opening a store with you, sure. But I don’t hate my job. I’m gonna go to work on Monday like always, and I’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, well, I won’t. I told Tommy to go fuck himself, so I don’t have a job anymore.”

  He shakes his head. “God. I’m sorry, man.”

  “I thought I had a partner I could count on. That’s why I quit my job.”

  “No.” His face gets hot, and he points at me. “You did that. Not me. Don’t put that on me. I didn’t tell my boss to go fuck himself. If you went off half-cocked on Tommy Weller, that’s on you.”

  “You’re a fucking pussy, man. A pussy-whipped little . . . pussy who don’t know what being a man is all about.”

  “What’s it about, Brian? You tell me.”

  “It’s about following your dreams. It’s about believing in yourself.”

  “You’re calling me a pussy? You sound like Céline Dion.”

  I throw up my hands. “Forget it, man. Just please don’t do this. Just wait until the vote.”

  “We back out now, we cut our losses, we can still get out of this thing without losing our asses.”

  “Not me,” I say. “I need this store to open. I need it to open, Ray. I moved back here. I’m the one who put up the money for O’Keefe to hold the property for us.”

  “Hey, man, I put up my share.”

  “I know. I know. I’m just saying, I can’t take this hit. You got a job—two jobs with Lacy’s. I quit my job. I can’t take this hit, man. I’ll lose my ass. I’ll have to declare fucking bankruptcy.”

  He hangs his head like it weighs a million pounds. He says, “I’m so sorry, Brian. I really am.” And the thing is, I know he’s sorry. He looks like he could start crying. But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the heaviest breath I ever saw a man take, and he says, “I know you’re disappointed in me. We just moved too fast on this deal. Simple as that. Rookie mistake. We should have concentrated on getting the vote passed first. That’s as much my fault as yours. I really thought we had it all locked up, too, but we didn’t. We were fucked the first time the quorum court refused to vote on it. We started losing money right then and there. And we got to face that. If we get out now, we’ll only lose what we already paid O’Keefe. That’s a hard loss, but it’s better than pumping more money and time into a place that ain’t never going to open. Not in this town. Not now. And that’s the bottom line. It’s just not going to happen, man. I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen.”

  I want to say something to him. Call him a pussy again, cuss him out, beg him, but I’ve already shot my wad. I got nothing left. He goes to his door, opens it, and walks inside. He never looks back at me.

  THREE SARABETH SIMMONS

  Nicki Minaj blasts me out of my sleep. “No Frauds,” way too early, way too loud.

  I reach for my phone. Shit. Pickett’s.

  “I’m on my way,” I say.

  “You’re late,” that fucking bitch tells me.

  “I know,” I say, swinging my feet to the floor. “I’m on my way. I had car trouble.”

  “You’re late,” she says again. It’s all she’s got to say.

  I hang up.

  I sit there on my bed for a second with my head in my hands. There’s a stabbing pain behind my right eye, and the whole inside of my head feels like it’s trying to get out. My stomach feels like it’s trying to get out, too, but I’m not going to puke. I’m not a puker.

  I get up and walk to the bedroom door. I listen a second to see if Tommy is still here. He’s going to work today, I think. I don’t hear anything, so I open the door and stick my head out. Nothing.

  I hurry to the bathroom and lock the door. I’m kind of shocked when I see my reflection in the mirror.

  Maybe it’s just that I’m hungover, but I can’t believe that this is my face, my body. Gary says I’m beautiful, but Gary’s a sweetheart. My head is shaped like a box, but my chin is pointy. My eyes are too big, and my mouth is too small. My belly is bigger than my tits, and my ass is basically nonexistent.

  Ugh.

  I pee, and while I’m sitting there, I put my face in my hands. My weird-shaped head hates me this morning.

  I need to stop drinking. I just turned nineteen years old, and I been drinking like I’m in a fucking country song since I was fifteen. It’s stupid.

  I wash up. I don’t have time to take a shower, but I brush my teeth and put on deodorant. Then I pull on my cleanest jeans, dig a shirt out of the closet, grab my work vest, and head out the door.

  I’m all the way down the hall before I realize Tommy and Momma are in the kitchen.

  He’s just wearing boxers and socks, and his big gut is whiter than an uncooked turkey. Momma says he
wears socks in bed, which I think might be the worst damn thing I ever heard. He’s sitting at the table polishing his old high school baseball trophies with a piece of suede while Momma cooks him breakfast. She’s wearing his shirt and a pair of pink panties. Just what I want to see first thing in the morning.

  “Well, look who’s up bright and early,” Tommy says. He puts down the trophy. His hair is sticking out in all directions, and he’s sitting there in his underwear and dirty socks, but he’s got a look on his face like he’s about to conduct a job interview.

  “Up late,” I say. “Gotta get to work.”

  I sit down at the kitchen table and start putting on my socks and shoes.

  “What time you supposed to be there?” he asks.

  I shrug.

  “This”—he mocks my shrug—“ain’t no time.”

  Momma is making French toast. She doesn’t turn around, just keeps whisking eggs.

  Tommy says, “So what time were you supposed to be at work?”

  I’m tying my shoe. “I don’t have to tell you what time. I’m gonna get yelled at when I get there. Don’t need you yelling at me here.”

  “You need somebody yelling at you here, I guess,” he says. “Ain’t supposed to go rolling in to work an hour late.”

  I pull on my other shoe.

  He says, “What would it be if everybody come in an hour late?”

  I stop what I’m doing and stare at him. “I wish they would. Then people would stop giving me shit.” I go back to my shoes. “Besides, it ain’t any of your business what I do or when I do it.”

  He turns to Momma’s back. “I don’t know what you were thinking raising a daughter to be like this one here. No man wants to be around this first thing in the morning.”

  Momma puts some bread in the pan and moves it around with a fork.

  Tommy looks back at me. “You could learn a thing or two from me, girl. You ever stop to consider that I’m the most successful motherfucker you know?”

  “That’s a depressing thought.” I tie my other shoe.

  He says, “I own four businesses.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Long as I’m paying the rent here—”

  “You ain’t renting me,” I say.

  “Long as I’m paying the rent around here—”