Fall in Light

"Feel no shame for what you are
Feel no shame for what you are
Feel no shame for what you are . . ." -- Jeff Buckley, "New Year's Prayer"

Hey kids! It's time for an opaque parable of my current existential angst awkwardly clothed in bad prose!

Red rolled into town when I was kicking dirt in the noonday sun. I had just downed the third shot of some cheap whiskey that looked like wood varnish and went down like paint stripper. The desert dust was going to cake the black chrome of his Cadillac into a cracked yellow. Red never did have much sense, but fuck it, he's the one driving the Cadillac while the sun dries out the green polyester on my Pinto.

Red was driving too fast and went past Casa de Jack a quarter of mile before he realized his mistake, then flipped a bitch, kicking up more dust before he finally braked in front of me. I didn't mind. My front yard was dust, a couple of plastic surplus chairs from the middle school and an AM radio sitting on the steps on the trailer.

"Fuckin' aye, Jack, you wanna fuckin' retire, you wanna fuckin' lay low, you coulda gone to fuckin' Palm Springs if you like the desert so much. But Kingman, Arizona? Man, ain't nothin' here but Bibles, skinny old fuckers and drunk pregant high schoolers."

"Well hello to you too asshole," I said, pouring some whiskey into a paper cup. I handed the cup over to Red. "Good seeing you again."

Red downed his shot while I took a swig from the bottle. "Fuck," Red spat, "how you drink this shit?"

"Like a guy who drinks mojitos should be puttin' down another man's drink. Siddown Red, you're liable to make a man nervous you keep standing up like that."

Red took a look at the once white plastic seat, now gray, covered with years of solified soot. You would've thought that he was about to sit on a public toilet seat splattered with the mess of a thousand truck drivers.

"So what brings you down to Kingman? Certainly ain't the culture."

"What do you think? The peanut gallery thinks it's about time you get back on the grift, and for once, I agree with the peanut gallery."

"Yeah? I heard the peanut gallery is doing fine without me."

"Shit, it's not about how we're doing. It's about how you're doing. Don't look right having a veritable fucking master grifter out here, pissing the days away with bad whiskey and talk radio."

I was trying for a chuckle and it came out all dry and evil sounding. "Master grifter? Red, before the last couple of gigs, I couldn't pull a scam worth shit. Timing was off, I was either just a step behind another joe on a mark, or the marks were way outta my league."

"So? You made up for that in spades, my man. Shit, what with getting Fanelli out of the picture and keeping both your balls intact. And you got the girl."

"Yeah, right, a lot of good that did me."

"What, still too early? OK man, fine. But you got more than what most people get, and with all that experience, seems a waste to be just sitting here."

"I got my ears to the ground."

"Uh huh, which is why you're in your wife-beaters and boxers listening to fat men in bad suits testify about the Lord our Jesus on AM radio while drinking yourself to sleep."

It wasn't really going to serve much of a purpose to get angry, so I didn't. "Yeah, well, I got no drama in my life, Red. For the first time in a long time, I got no drama. No one to get me so spun around that I don't know which way is up and which was is down. Got no entanglements. I do have the warm sun and bad whiskey. I got enough to live and keep me, well, not happy, but not sad either. And that's a helluva lot better than all that shit that went down."

Red and I sat there for a while, letting our lungs get scorched by the heat of the day. Red looked over at me and said, "Hey, the peanut gallery knows a lot of bad shit went down. Bad shit that no one should go through. They talk about that too, which is why we haven't bugged you for the last six months. Hell, if I were in your shoes, maybe I'd go all batshit and get some twelve-gauge facial reconstruction. But the fact of the matter is, you don't seem so batshit to me right now."

"Look," Red kept jawing, "so you don't want to be back in that bad place. But I know that you haven't felt that joy like a fluttering of wings in your chest. And I can't guarantee you'll ever feel it if you come back home, but you certainly won't feel it again sitting out here." That Red, he can sure be poetic.

"You know I still dream about how it all went down," I said. "The way the bullet slammed into my chest, me throwing up blood as my heart was racing and my body went cold. The way everything felt numb and nauseous at the same time when I went into shock. I think about her saying goodbye. That's not a place where I want to be again, Red."

"Yeah, but those dreams aren't going to go away. Least you can do is try to get some new ones. As I said, ain't no guarantees that you won't find yourself in that situation again, but you sure as hell ain't gonna get any better dreams with your chinky yellow ass sitting here."

"But I ain't gonna get hurt either."

"Well, I'm not here to twist your arm. You wanna rejoin the rest of the world, you know where to reach us. Just give it some thought, OK?"

"Sure man."

Red went back into his Cadillac and kicked up some more dust. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching cool wooden crosses on the hill as the preacherman testified about the revival of the soul.