am Hayter, through an absurd amount of effort dedicated to a task so without import, manages to drop a single salt crystal wedged precariously between a grubby thumb and index finger into a glass of warm water: the star performer for the wriggling ray of sunshine that has found its way through the mostly closed Martha Stewart curtained window above the kitchen sink. Sam rests his head on his folded arms plopped like a couple of pieces of skinny firewood atop the card table/ kitchen table. Sam, grinning, is watching the execution of the crystal with drug-induced stupidity. He watches it disintegrate, seemingly without pain, creating an ethereal warping of space, a visible absence where earlier there had only been absence. Sam chuckles, and his fifteen-year-old blond-white hair vibrates stupidly. Sam drools. His eyes are dilated brown vortexes, sucking the glass of water eagerly into a world of machine-gun firing neurons, hijacked by three tiny squares of Daffy-Duck paper. The acid disintegrates much earlier that morning under Sam's tongue, protruding from a cherubic set of red lips, O-shaped in recognition of the seriousness of the jack-off session proceeding farther south. Getting high and jacking off: a summation as good as any of Sam's young life. And cutting. He needs to cut himself.

Wanda Hayter, forty, thrice divorced, and a board certified massage therapist, leaves her trailer and Sam, her only acknowledged son, to fend for themselves yesterday (Friday) morning. Johnny, one of Wanda's regular customers, comes over Thursday night for a session that, as usual, begins with Wanda telling Sam to "Go play in the road or something, shithead." After an hour, Sam returns and oddly, the session between Johnny and Wanda is still in full swing. Usually, Wanda's clients are in and out in less than an hour.

"Mom must like this one," Sam thinks, meandering to the fridge and taking a gulp of barely in-date whole milk straight from the half-gallon jug. Just before turning on the TV to catch a rerun of Magnum P.I., Sam hears his mother scream out with, he guesses, joy: OHMYGODFUCKYEAH, JOHNNY!"

Sam rolls his eyes and is glad to muffle the ecstatic wailings of his mom with the comforting hum of T.C.'s chopper and Magnum's Ferrari. He needs to pee, but the bathroom is next to his mom's massage parlor/ bedroom and, given the current amount of activity emanating from the business end of the trailer, Sam really has no desire to be closer to the action than necessary. Sam jacks up the volume of the TV, sticks in a bag of popcorn in the microwave, waits for a commercial, and steps out of the sliding glass door in the kitchen to the wooden, dilapidated excuse for a deck attached to the trailer but barely. He yawns, pushing his beltless pants halfway down his thighs (Sam enjoys the feel of the night air on his bare ass); his body is handsomely silhouetted under the star canopied night. Sam urinates into a plastic, K-Mart brand, toddlers' swimming pool, crumpled on the ground and filled with dirty rainwater, a McDonald's Big Mac wrapper, and an obviously used and recently discarded condom. "Some people," says Sam out loud, his tone one of repulsion. However, he's oblivious to the fact that pissing off a deck with one's penis exposed for God and the world to see is just as much a violator of societal mores as flinging a used condom anywhere but in a trashcan. He shakes off the last couple of drops urine, yanks up his pants, and steps back inside the trailer to hear his mom exclaim, "INTHEASSOHYEAHBABY!" Sam slaps himself in the face, hard, numbing the grotesque reality of his life. He gingerly withdraws the steaming bag of popcorn from the microwave, grabs a Rite-Aid brand quasi Dr. Pepper—Dr. Thunder—from the fridge and sits on the couch, watching Magnum sit in his kayak, paddling in a calm Pacific, and Sam wished more than anything in the whole entire goddamned freaking world that he were Magnum P.I…or T.C…or Rick…or even Higgins—anybody but himself. He'd even trade places with one of those stupid Dobermans that are always chasing Magnum.

Sam takes a couple of bites of popcorn, swallows a mouthful of Dr.Thunder, burps, and then digs out a bone handled Case pocketknife stolen from K-Mart (the only place he and his mom ever shop) from a pant's pocket. He flips open a blade and without taking his eyes from Magnum's muscular hairy chest (of which he is envious), Sam guides the stainless steel tip of the blade into his left forearm and pulls toward the ceiling, as if the blade were the zipper of his fake Member's Only Jacket. Up up up, Sam provokes the Case up his arm, slicing a freckle in two in the process. The cut isn't deep, only deep enough to barely seep blood, just deep enough so that you can look at the arm and know that the blade had been there. Without removing his fixed gaze from the TV, Sam folds the blade and sticks the Case deep in one his front pockets and stares with wonder as the scene of Magnum paddling dissolves into a flashback of Magnum as a little kid, his father's oversized navy issued watch dangling from his wrist. The young Magnum is saluting his dead father at a military funeral a la JFK Jr's poignant salute to his fallen daddy.

Early the next morning, a laughing, black spandex wearing Wanda, arm in arm with Johnny, emerges from the message parlor/ bedroom. Sam is asleep on the couch, the TV still blaring, when Wanda whispers in his right ear, "All yours for the weekend, shithead. Love ya bunches."

Wanda kisses Sam on the forehead, reaches into her purse and leaves a twenty with a Post-it Note sticking to it lying on the card table. The Post-it Note reads in wild cursive: "Gone to Crazyhorse! B BACK MON!" Crazyhorse is the name of a campground in Gatlinburg reputed (and disputed) as having the world's largest (longest? widest? steepest?) waterslide. Sam doesn't hear the motorcycle leave the trailer, carrying the couple to the Smoky Mountains for a weekend of drinking Bud and fucking…pointless, ponders Sam, when they could easily drink Bud and fuck at the trailer for free.

 

ometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name sings the TV two hours after Sam has watched the salt crystal dissolve. Sam Malone and Woody are stationed behind the bar. Sam Hayter, in his altered state, believes himself to be sitting between Norm and Cliff. Sam sees himself as one of the cronies, one of the regulars. When he enters the bar, everybody yells, "Sam!" just as they do for Norm. He's one of the gang. Hey, thinks Sam, me and Sam Malone have the same first name! As this notion enters Sam's discombobulated brain, he starts to giggle, and he sees himself inside the Magnavox only inches away from his wasted frame, sitting at the Cheer's bar saying, "Hey, Sammy! I'm a Sam, too. I'm Sam I am. You know: green eggs and Sam. Get it!? Sam instead of ham. You know: Dr. Shit's book—I mean Seuss—Dr. ShitSeuss!"

Sam drools and cackles on the carpet. He laughs hysterically. He is naked. He has harmless slash marks all over his body, paper-cuts and bee-stings—nuisances more than real honest to God wounds. Sam's thin body, borderline albino in its artic starkness, looks as if someone had taken a red Sharpie and haphazardly drawn all over his body; there's even a vertical red slash, thin and precise, dissecting the top epidermal layer of his penis, unclean, and covered with a two day supply of come residue clinging to its skin like steam to a mirror.

The phone rings.

Sam is still buried in the comedy playing in the TV in front of his eyes. He sees himself bantering with Carla and eating pretzels. "Woody," says Sam Malone. "Give little Sammy here a drink."

Sam giggles, oblivious to the ringing phone. "Yeah, Woody! Sam wants a drink-not Big Sammy, silly, Little Sammy, you know, ya goof ball: me! I'm a Sam, too. I'm Sam I am! Woody? Hahaha! I've got a woody, Woody! Get it: a woody, a boner!"

On the twenty-sixth ring, Sam grabs the phone and says through slurred speech, "Hay-lo."

"Is this the residence of Wanda Hayter?" inquires an important sounding voice, probably a fucking bill collector.

"Mom's in Crazyhorse," says Sam, staring at the kaleidoscopic colors of Sam Malone's sweater; the colors are swirling like a tornado and they're so beautiful.

"Pardon?" says the voice on the phone.

"Crazyhorse. Uh oh, um, if you're with AT&T she's got Real Failure like my Aunt Woozy. That's what mom said to say the next time one of you sonsabitches called," says Sam, blitzed, and staring at his fingertips, at the minute capillaries just underneath the surface, at the blood nets and streams morphing every stretching second into mighty torrents of gushing red rivers.

"Um…is this Ms. Wanda's Hayter's residence?" asks the voice with a tone turning slightly peevish.

"Huh?' asked a fucked-up Sam, who has in the past eight hours ingested another eight tabs of Daffy-Duck acid, contributing only in part to his bodily mutilation. "This is Sammy Hayter, and, uh, the check's in the mail, MOTHERFUCKER! Hahaha! My mom's in the hospital with Real Failure. You get that? Wait a minute: are you with Sprint or AT&T? HEY! JUST WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE! Mom doesn't even carry long distance anymore. She buys them calling cards from the lobby of that Perkin's Restaurant off exit seven going toward Bristol."

Sam changes expression. He is perplexed, but not alarmingly so. Sam's eyes glassily reflect Sam Malone's giant laughter. "If you aren't with Sprint or AT&T, who are you, uh, with? MCI? Who is this? This and piss. Hmm, this and piss. I'm a poet, and I by-God know it!"

Sam stares at the gigantic holes in the receiver's mouthpiece. He moves the receiver farther from his mouth, afraid that he may fall in one of the cavernous death traps threatening to suck him in and kill him. He possibly could be disemboweled during the fall by the treacherous, knife-welding eagles sure to be on the attack.

Ike, the bewildered man with whom Sam is speaking, furrows his brow in confusion. Ike works as a people-finder for Publishers Clearing House and is simply trying to determine if their next multi-million dollar winner, a Ms. Wanda Hayter, is going to be at home on Monday. On Monday at 7:30 PM, tucked between game-shows airing on the east coast, the Sweepstakes team will arrive in a van, a reporter with his camera crew will emerge and bounce up to the front door, ring the doorbell, and the reporter will shove a microphone in the face of some lucky winner and proclaim happily that "Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Soandso, you're the winner of the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes!" The telecast is supposed to be live. One of Ike's job duties is to make sure that the lucky someone is home to answer the door. Ike is to make sure that the lucky winner isn't naked. Ike is to make sure that the lucky winner looks surprised when the doorbell rings. Ike is insurance, baby.

Ike, known affectionately among co-workers as "Wife-beater" for no other reason than the color of his skin—black—and his sharing the same first name with Ike Turner, world famous wife beater, turns to his immediate boss, Lewis Epstein, and says, covering the phone's mouth piece with a cupped hand, "Louie, did you give me the right number."

"Five-five-five-forty-two-oh-two, Beater," answers a bald Louis, employee at Publisher's Clear House the past twenty-four years.

"Excuse me, sir," says Ike to Sam. "Is this five-five-five-four-two-zero-two?"

Sammy, growing increasing afraid of the ever-widening holes in the telephone receiver, says, "Our telephone has only been disconnected because the government didn't send the check on time like they said they would—MOTHERFUCKERS!"

"I didn't say anything about your phone being disconn—"

"I need a parachute. If I fall into one of these holes, I'm so shit out'a luck—"

"I'm trying to reach Wanda Hayter—Hi-ter or Hate-er, I'm not sure which. If I've got the wrong number I'm sor—"

"Mom'll be back on Monday," says Sam abruptly before yanking the phone's cord from the wall and flinging the receiver across the room before one of the widening mouths can swallow him whole, like that octopus in the bible that ate that submarine.

 

am's sad. Sam is trying to laugh at Garfield, but he can't. Sam, too, tried earlier to laugh at Born Loser but to no avail. The only thing about the Sunday comics that Sam Hayter finds even remotely amusing is the space murdered by the strips themselves. The very frames of the comic's strips shoot the emptiness of the delicious void the finger; the void is that nothingness that Sam can't articulate, but for which he longs. To sum up: Sam wants to die.

For Sad Sam, Daffy-Duck has run out of luck, leaving our self-mutilating, masturbating anti-hero of this tale stuck with a slothful tick-tocking time, dripping slower than a leaky faucet. Acid kills time: everybody knows that. Sam, with the acid losing its punch, is alone with himself and the rank and dank trailer in which every object withers and wilts under the moisture and heat of poverty, ignorance, and desperation—all expressed and more easily classified under the umbrella category known as FUCKED. Nobody can spread his or her legs like members of FUCKED. Wanda, a member of FUCKED since she was fucked as an eight year old by her own father (also a member of FUCKED since the day he was forced as a four-year-old to ingest a meal of honest to God gruel, flour and water, looking like a bowl of come, because that's all there was to eat) was as FUCKED as FUCKED can be. Members of FUCKED beget other members of FUCKED quite easily, and Sam, our fucked up little hero is in the hinterland between SCREWED and FUCKED, but a member of neither at the moment, is disturbing close in proximity to that wonderful club, better and more esteemed than FUCKED or SCREWED or LAMBASTED or STUPID (of which we all are members) known as WASTED. Many members of WASTED are the taints and tweeners of human anatomy and society respectively. Taints and tweeners could'a been somebody worth a shit: a Shakespeare-type or the discoverer of a cure for AIDS or even, if anything, a carbon cutout but moderately happy suburbanite; but, being in the taint of existence, they must flop like a trout on a stringer being carried to Judas' pickup truck. The people of FUCKED must evaporate and disintegrate, just like Sam's salt crystal in water and the squares of time-death known as the extended come, or the Technicolor OZ, or the eternal giggle, or the hand thrown over the shoulder by Jesus, or Buddha, or LSD, or Ecstasy, or Psilocybin, or an eternal round of golf at Pebble Beach, or a good cry.

Sam's sad, and it's early Sunday morning, and he's not high anymore. Sam takes out the Case, flings open a blade, turns on the tube to a rerun of The A-Team, and just as B.A. and Murdock are about to kill one another, Sam plunges the knife a half-inch into his forearm. Sam stares at the blade doing nothing. He waits. Nothing. Nothing. And then, finally, there it is: a pool of blood, dark and velvety, rushing to surround the Visigoth, as if each iron rich cell were a teenaged wasteland, rushing for the rock group who'll tell them who they are, what they are; many don't make it to the music. Many get their necks broken, their backs broken, their spirits broken. The picture of Sam's hunched body, staring with glazed eyes at his arm, could be the cover shot for a magazine celebrating the white trash Zeitgeist of southwest, Virginia and upper east Tennessee. Sam's a taint, dangling precariously on the tightrope separating shit and come, and he's not FUCKED or SCREWED but by the grace of God and the devil of capitalism and dumb fucking luck, he might avoid the sentence of WASTED and end up being in that club endeared by all: LOADED.

The phone rings only a half-ring before Sam grabs it and barks, "Mom, when are you coming home?"

Ike responds, "Excuse me. I'm looking for one, er, I'm looking for a lady by the name of Wanda Hayter. I think I spoke with you the other day."

Sam watches Murdock prance crazily around B.A., all the while listening to B.A. scream: "You a fool, Murdock! You a fool!"

Ike says, "Sir? Still there?"

"Huh?" answers Sam. "Mom uses calling cards she buys in the lobby of Perkin's Restaurant, that one off exit seven going toward Bristol. We don't carry long distance anymore. Mom told me to tell you she's suffering from Real Failure and that she'd call you—"

"Son, I'm just calling—inquiring, really—to see if Wanda might be home tomorrow evening, from, say, six o'clock on? You see, to cut to the chase, your mom's won a lot of money. Son—what's your name?"

"Sam Hayter," answers Sam, turning off the tube. "I'm Sam Hayter. What did Mom win?"

"Son—Sam—your Mom has won a lot of money-A LOT OF MONEY. If she's at home, let me speak with her for a moment. Um, you've heard of the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, haven't you?" says Ike.

"Is that where you get twelve CD's for a penny? That's bullshit, man. I—"

"Sam, can you hold on just a minute? Please don't hang up?" says Ike.

"Alright," says Sam, turning the TV back on.

Ike sighs and rubs his temples. "This dumb kid—I think he's her son or something—he's a fucking retard, Louie. And you know I don't throw around the word retard loosely with my family history," says Ike, once again cupping a large hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

"Beater," says Louis, "death, taxes, and dumb motherfucking trailer trash winning lotteries and our sweepstakes: things you can count on. Just tell the dumb shit that he and his mommy can ditch the government cheese next week. Tell him that we'll be knocking on his trailer door tomorrow, and that maybe he and his mommy should abstain from incest just long enough for us to get them on camera, crying, and screaming their goddamn heads off, 'I can't believe it! I can't believe it!' "

Ike smirks. "Kid," he says. "I just want to know if your mother's going to be home tomorrow evening. Am I going slowly enough for you? Tomorrow evening? Wanda has won a lot of money. OK, kid? You getting' any of this?"

B.A. has Murdock in a full nelson and Sam is laughing so hard he can't breathe. Sam loves it when B.A. and Murdock squabble, because Sam knows they love each other. The really do. Big Black assed mean motherfucker B.A. and daffy, quacky and lilly white Murdock: LOVE. They are LOVE and so funny while expressing it. Sam laughs and laughs at the antics of the television duo. Ike screams into the phone: "SON? YOU THERE? SON? GODDAMNIT! DO YOU HEAR ME?"

Ike slams down the phone, digs into a pocket and starts sucking wildly on a cherry Lollipop. "FUCK!" screams Ike. "FUCK FUCK FUCK! I hate this shit. I DO NOT—I repeat—I do not get paid enough for this shit."

Louie, playing a bowling game on his computer wristwatch answers, "Well, you made forty-two last year, and I cleared fifty-five—I'd say we're both obscenely overpaid for what we do—mainly tracking down dipshits all over the place, so we can give them free money."

Ike pounds his hands on the desk. "Well, they don't pay me enough to deal with Virginia dumb shits."

Louie, still bowling, says, "Wife Beater: dumbshits are everywhere. They're in every nook and cranny. Dumbshits make the world go round. Dumbshits pay our salary. Dumbshits pay everybody's salary.

"Deep thoughts by Louie. Just what I need," says Ike, through a chuckle. "Well, I've got to go early to Virginia. I can't show up at Wanda Hayter's goddamned trailer, and she's off nailing her brother or something."

"That's true," answers Louie, his watch beeping, indicating the end of his game. "What do you know, I finally broke one hundred."

 

am misses school. One more month, and he'll be back. If Sam could kill a month with his bare hands, it'd be August, so heavy and hot, and wet, like carpet with soup spilled on it in it fuck it you can't clean that shit up. August is Wanda's slowest month. The weather's too hot to fuck. August is a shitty month. Sam sits in the floor, naked and self-mutilated, his stomach gnawing and gnashing and gnarling. He's very hungry. Daisy knocks a half-knock on the trailer's front door and steps inside. "Jesus Christ!" she says, seeing Sam's sad body.

Daisy sits on the couch, her butt perched on the edge. She runs her hands through Sam's dirty hair, sticky and oily. She thinks, He needs to brush his teeth comb his hair I love him this boy sitting here all hurt it'll be a miracle if he isn't dead by twenty a wife-beater a weirdo freak axe-murderer I love him this boy my boy his cuts every cut a river a torrent rushing into a hurting soul I will ride his boat his ship into a sea of eternal love Jesus my love is cornball shit for this boy this boy who'll amount to probably nothing everything maybe. Daisy says, "Well, we're back."

Sam stands up and sits on the edge of the couch with Daisy, who, two years his senior, lives two trailers down from Sam's. Daisy lives with her grandmother. Daisy was the product of one of those druggie moms, who sticks their kid in Foster Care because the new boyfriend doesn't want the baggage, and the grandmother swoops in to say No No No, I'll take her (or him). I'll take her. She can live with me. And the grandmother thinks, Here's a second chance. I'll do it right this time. I'll save this one. Daisy's face is burnt red. Sam can tell she's been to the beach. She's thin and usually pale and has grown up with Sam, two trailers apart. She'll start at the community college next year. She's wearing a John Prine concert T-shirt. Her fingernails are cut—not bitten—short. She hates makeup. Her hair is simple, pulled back into a ponytail. She's good.

"Hot?" asks Sam.

"Myrtle Beach sucks. God it sucks. I hate that fucking place. It's hotter than hell. I missed you the whole time."

"You've only been gone since Friday night," mutters Sam.

"Well I missed you the entire time."

"I don't know why."

"I do." Daisy turns to Sam and kisses his lips. "You seriously need to brush your teeth. Jesus, Sam, look at you! Where's Wanda?"

"With Johnny. They went to Crazyhorse."

Daisy shakes her head.

Let's go get in the shower, Daisy thinks. She smiles and traces a finger over a humpbacked multiplicity of red lines strewn between Sam's left collarbone and nipple. She feels like she's she gone too fast over a bunch of unnoticed speed bumps. Good God, she thinks. He's so gone. Let's take a shower. Let's take a shower. Let's take a shower. He's so gone. She takes Sam by a hand and her clothes magically fall to the floor. They get in the shower, and Daisy doesn't bother turning on a light. She turns on the water in the shower, letting it run awhile before getting in, allowing the shitty water heater to do its thing. Sam brushes his teeth and spits, all in the dark. He pees, doesn't flush. Daisy slides in the shower. Sam pushes himself against her, his penis hard against her ass. Sam was hard before he stepped into the shower. Sam was getting hard mid piss. Just the proximity of Diasy's nakedness, just the thought of it, and his cock is straining, like a hitchhiker thumbing for a ride underneath a rainstorm, one of those summer storms, out of nowhere, a deluge, c'mon and stop goddamnit! but they drive on on on down the goddamned road. Now in the shower, he's on her and trying to shove himself into her, to fit into her, and it is this second that Daisy understands that sex can be so desperate, so like a drink of water for a thirsting to death man. Sam doesn't kiss her neck; he isn't moaning; he simply wants. He wants. He fucking wants. Wait a minute, Wait wait, she says, Wait wait, and she steps out of the shower, goes into Wanda's room, opens The Drawer, grabs a condom, steps back in the shower, Wait wait Sam says, coming, already coming, must've finished it while she was out, and she wipes him off with a washcloth thinking, he'll last longer anyway, and she slides the condom on his penis still quivering and leaking come, their bodies wet and warm in the water, and he sits down, his ass making a sucking sound on the floor of the shower, and she lowers herself slowly, both hands on his shoulders holding tightly, John Prine's lyrics bouncing inside her head like flailing children running in a field, arms outstretched, running little airplanes, sometimes colliding, nobody getting hurt, lots of laughing, the kids singing when you're in my arms I know you're happy to be there…just as long as I'm with you I'm happy anywhere and a multiplicity of water droplets explode on the rocking backs of Daisy and Sam, killing time the time-honored way.

 

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© Chris Duncan 2002