ke has just arrived at Tricities Regional Airport when his cell phone rings. "Ike," he answers.

"Wife Beater? Ike? I can barely hear ya."

"Louie? That you?" says Ike.

"Ike?"

"What?'

"I can barely hear ya?" complains Louis.

"This is Ike, Louie, goddamnit! What?!"

"You're not going to believe this shit."

Ike opens the driver's door to his rental, a white Malibu. It has an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Goddamn smokers, Ike thinks .

"Ike? You there?" asks Louie.

"What happened?" responds Ike, getting into the car.

"Wanda—our winner. She's dead. Motorcycle accident. She and her boyfriend, both of them."

"You gotta be shittin—"

"I called the brat back—Sam—and his girlfriend answered. She said the cops had just called fifteen minutes before I called. She said they need the son to identify the body. She was crying and shit, Beater, but she sounded like she's got half a brain you know. This shit is fucking horrible. Beater?"

Ike is shaking his head. "Goddamn, Louie. Dead? Jesus Christ! Dead? Goddamnit! I hate my fucking job."

Louie's voice is suddenly hopeful. "However, Beater. This shit can still work. Could even work great. The best. Shit, this might be fantastic. POVERTY STRICKEN SON WITH DEAD MOMMY AND NO DADDY WINS MILLIONS FROM PUBLISHER'S CLEARING HOUSE! Does that not sound fucking unbelievable, Beater? C'mon, Beater. Does that not sound delicious? I'm like, give me a goddamned break this is too good—horrible, yes, but good, Beater, oh so goddamned good. Might as well make some chicken soup out'a this chicken shit. That's what I say. The Coats say go for it. They say get on with it. Ike? Ike?"

"I'm here. Jesus H. Christ. What do you want me to do?"

"Listen, Wife Beater. Sam's gone—to identify his mom, OK. The girlfriend is with him. Now, uh, Sam'll be back at the trailer in say, I don't know, probably four hours. Your responsibility hasn't changed—well, it's changed a little—instead of making sure Wanda is there to answer the door, you make goddamned sure that Sam is there to answer the door. Of course, uh, make sure he's somewhat lucid while he's on camera, OK. Ya got that, Beater? This could be good. The crew'll be on site by—what time is it now—OK the crew'll be on sight by six thirty tonight. That's uh, it's just after six now, that's a little over twelve hours—"

"I can fucking add Lou—"

"So you need to make sure the kid is in decent shape for the camera. If we could just tape the response, well, well fuck it, we wouldn't have a goddamn worry, now would we?"

"No, Louie, we—"

"So get him halfway cognizant for his shot on camera, OK, Beater. I'd go ahead and go over to the trailer. I told the girlfriend that you were coming, so she's leaving the door unlocked for ya. Go make yourself at home and complete the goddamn mission. I feel so freaking discombobulated, Beater. The kid…his mom kicking off, jeez man, ya know. What's the world coming to anyway? This'll be great though, you know, Beater. You know."

"Louie, how's the kid dong? Sam? Under the circumstances I'm sure he's all to hell but--"

"That's the thing—that's the thing—that's just it, Beater. The girlfriend said he just started giggling and laughing like a goddamned drunk banshee monkey. Can you believe that? Giggling and laughing when a cop tells you that your mother's dead. How bizarre is that? Jesus Christ, these kids, ya know, Ike? Anyway, the girlfriend says that Sam is actually highly intelligent, borderline genius, but that he's high out of his mind on acid. The girlfriend actually has half a clue, Beater. Maybe we should give her the goddamn money. He's all right. He's fine and dandy."

"Is there any fam—"

"Way ahead of you. Nobody. An ex-husband that's doing time. Her mom's dead. Her dad—nobody's knows. Anyway, Sam's the big winner. Two point three million. He can get a whopper double-wide with that, can't he, Beater!" says Louis, laughing.

Ike sighs and closes his eyes. "Go to the trailer and wait, right Louie?"

"That's right. Go to the trailer and wait. You OK, Beater. You sound a little disturbed."

"Christ, Louie, you just told me that—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I'm Mr. Insensitivity. Well, anyway, just wait. And call me. Call me before, uh, nine o'clock. OK? Call me. I'll need an update for the Coats."

Ike starts the ignition. "Sure," he says.

 

am's eyes are closed, but he isn't asleep as is Daisy, her head propped against Sam's left shoulder, her mouth barely open. A patrol car is whisking them to Gatlinburg, so Sam can identify the body. Mink, the cop who's doing the driving to the morgue, keeps saying, "Buddy, you OK? We'll get you there ASAP."

Mink looks like he's about twenty, not much older than Sam. "You wanna listen to the radio or something."

Without opening his eyes, Sam says very clearly, "Officer, that'd be great. If you don't mind, could we listen to Public Radio?"

Mink, taken slightly off guard by the calmness of Sam's voice, answers, "Sure, sure. You got it. Classical music, right? That's what those Public Radio station's play isn't it? Classical?"

Sam, holding his eyes as tightly shut as possible, says in a congenial tone, "Yes. If you could play come classical that'd be great. Thanks."

While Mink is scanning the stations, Sam runs a hand up his T-shirt and places it over his left breast, his right index finger on top of his left nipple. He can feel his heart beating but so slowly. Sam is upside down in that the more a situation worsens, the calmer, the more subdued is his reaction. Sam figures that right now, in the back of this patrol car driving to a morgue where his no doubt highly disfigured mother (burned up? ripped apart? her eyeballs dislodged?) lay on a metal table, naked and stiff, his heartbeat is no more than forty-five beats a minute. Calm. Mink finds Johnson City's WETS and the sound of Debussy's "Water Music" drowns the car's engine.

"You want a biscuit from Hardee's?" asks Mink. "Cause I've got to eat something—if you don't mind stopping. I'm getting' the weak shakes, you know. I think I'm hypoglycemic or something. Runs in the family. My dad's diabetic. But, hey, we'll go straight on. It won't bother me a bit to go straight on," says Mink.

"Go ahead and stop. Mom's not going anywhere. And thanks," answers Sam, his eyes still clenched shut.

Mink doesn't know what to say. "Huh?" he asks.

"Thanks for finding WETS," answers Sam, opening his eyes. "I contributed fifty dollars to them last year during their fund drive. I stole the money from my mother. If I remember correctly, mom earned the money by blowing this trucker named Riley; he delivers plants to greenhouses or something. He was an old bastard, and he kept telling Mom about how his wife was a member of the Eastern Star and how she was so great and all, but that she had back problems and diabetes and couldn't fuck anymore and what's a guy going to do. Mom just laughed and laughed. They didn't even bother to shut the bedroom door. Mom thought I was asleep, but I wasn't. Anyway, the next day, I stole that money and sent it to WETS. Mom never even asked me about it. That's funny, isn't it, officer? My mother, in her own dead, small way is helping me listen to 'Prairie Home Companion'."

Jesus Christ, Mink thinks, turning up the music.

"You might want to consider stopping at a McDonalds, officer," says Sam. "I know you said you wanted Hardee's but McDonald's is quite good too and not as crowded."

"Thanks, kid, uh, call me Mink, OK."

"Mink?' says Sam. "Wow. That's a fucked up name—no offense intended officer. Mink? Sounds dirty like pussy or something—the word not the actuality."

"Just shut up back there. I know you're upset and all…" says Mink.

Sam hugs his skinny legs and shakes his head no when Mink asks him if he wants a biscuit. While Mink is driving and "Watermusic" fills the patrol car and the tires are now cutting through predawn day-night, Sam surreptitiously digs out the Case and opens a blade and without any hesitation, he plunges the knife into his thigh through his jeans, just a half inch or so, just the tip, just the head, poking its way through the wet hole, the entrance to something better. Mink chews with his mouth open. In the rearview mirror all he can see is Sam's face staring straight ahead, his eyes blank, his expression neutral save for the thinnest of smirks. Sam pulls the knife from his leg, folds the blade, and puts the Case back in his pocket.

"You OK?" asks Mink.

Sam nods his head and opens his eyes for the first time since getting into the patrol car. Sam's face involuntarily scrunches like a toddler's. He didn't want to see, not like this, not now. His mouth opens but there is no sound. His hands shake. His body shakes. He cries. The early morning stars are boring. All the light that fills his brain is so boring, so lame, so K-Mart, so shitty, so dirty, so unexploding, so unromantic, so unspectacular. He cries open-mouthed and without sound, his usual method of crying. He had every intention of not opening his eyes until he saw his dead mom.

 

ke parks his rental Malibu, sighs, farts three times, rechecks the address on a piece of crumpled paper, takes a drink of stale, fizzless Diet Coke, and thinks, Fucking trailers.

He walks through the small, overgrown yard. An emaciated calico cat with dangling tits weaves its way between his legs. "Fuck off," says Ike. Entering the trailer the smell of White Trash hits him flush in the face: Fried food, cat piss, cat liter, stale milk, dirty carpet, a backed -up septic-tank, spilled goldfish food ground into the fifteen year old carpet, a sink full of dirty dishes, cigarette butts squashed in the unlikeliest of places, empty beer bottles, the wafting latex fuck-stench of condoms tied in knots, hidden not well in clumps of tissue paper, dog shit, coffee grinds, old bananas, piles and piles and piles of unwashed laundry on the floor, in the kitchen, on the couch—shit everywhere.

Ike grabs his cell phone from his pocket and dials up Louis. After a few rings there's an answer.

"Yeah," says a tired voice.

"I'm in Mayberry, Louie, and it fucking sucks."

"Now, now, Beater, it can't be all that bad. Are you in Virginia or Tennessee?"

Ike laughs. "I'm in both—isn't that wonderful? I'm in Bristol, which lies on the Virginia-Tennessee line. Jesus Christ all these fuckers know how to do is fuck their brothers and sisters, worship Winston Cup Racing and Awesome Bill from Dawsonville, and chew tobaccy. Jesus H. Christ. I'm in Wanda's trailer right now. I swear to God I need to break out the Luvox or something. I feel like bugs are crawling all over me. You know I'm a clean freak."

"Except for your women, Beater," answers Louis.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"It's after eight," says Ike, stepping back outside and heading for the Malibu. The kid and the girlfriend'll be back in a couple of hours. I'm going to take a nap in the car, maybe listen to Yanni or something, I don't know. I'm sure as hell not going back in that shithole. I probably already have fleas."

Louis laughs. "Well, everything's looking good. The crew should be there on time. You know what you need to do. Why don't you get some beauty sleep—you can use all you can get."

"OK, baby," says Ike, closing the door to the Malibu and hitting the automatic door lock button, incubating himself in the rental car with its nice leather seating. Ike slides Yanni's CD "Live at the Acropolis" into the CD player and closes his eyes seeing he knows not why his smiling, fat, and blacker than coal Grandma cooking greens and frying country ham.

 

aurice is a fallen Catholic, maybe thirty-five years old, and wears tiny diamond studs in both elf-like ears. He stands maybe five feet tall. His hair is bleached blond, cut very short, and stiff with styling gel. He wears a Celtic knot ring on his right hand. His tongue is pierced. He is gay. He is Gatlinburg's medical examiner. He shrugs his shoulders indifferently when Mink asks him how he is doing, not really caring, just making conversation.

Maurice answers, "Heureux je ne suis pas mort." Glad I'm not dead. Maurice minored in French in college and likes to rattle it off as much as possible, amusing himself with the blank looks of the people to whom he is talking.

"What?" asks Mink.

"Nothing oh nothing. I guess you're Sam," says Maurice, his voice accented with kindness and a slight lisp, his words sounding like I geth you're tham.

Sam doesn't respond. He's staring at the speckled VCT industrial strength vinyl flooring. Daisy answers for him. "Yeah, he's Sam. Sam Hayter."

Maurice stares at Sam noticing a half-dollar sized bloodstain, now a deep burgundy, on his right thigh. Maurice touches Sam's shoulder. "Did you hurt your leg?"

Daisy and Mink both look at Sam's leg.

Sam looks at Maurice and smiles. "Nope—not lately. These are old pants."

"Well. Okay then," says Maurice. "Let's head on back. It's too late for this stuff—or early."

Mink, Daisy and Sam follow Maurice through a couple of sets of stainless steel, banged up doors. The smell of rubbing alcohol and Lysol burns Sam's nose. Daisy pinches her nose closed with a thumb and index finger. Mink sees her and follows suit. Sam lets his nose burn. His eyes burn too, as if he were submerged in a swimming pool, deep and clear, and someone had just dumped in a gallon of gasoline.

Just before going through another set of doors, Maurice stops, clears his throat, and says to Daisy: "Perhaps you should wait out here. Your decision but, you know…"

"Sam?" asks Daisy.

"Stay out here," Sam answers.

"Definitely," says Maurice in support of Sam.

"Let's go on then," says Mink, motioning for Maurice to go ahead and open the door. Daisy wrings her fingers nervously. Sam's face actually looks healthy and pink, a contrast to his usually pallid complexion. There is even a slight bounce in his step as he follows Mink and Maurice into the refrigerated room of dead people, the stainless steel door swinging shut behind him. Daisy looks as if she's going to cry.

The room is cold. While a radio plays a Randy Travis song, Maurice calmly motions for the cop and Sam to follow him. Maurice quickly goes to a wall of doors and pulls out a body. He throws back the part of a blue sheet covering the head. Sam laughs; he can't believe it. Wanda Hayter is missing her nose. The rest of her head seems to be without injury. Sam keeps laughing. "Son…," says Mink. "Uh, I know you're upset and all—"

Maurice interrupts Mink, saying, "It was sheared off." He offers no follow-up explanation.

Sam is laughing so hard he can barely breathe. Daisy pokes her head in the room. "Sam—you OK? Is it—she—not Wanda? Is Wanda alive?"

Sam stops laughing on a dime. With a serious face he says: "She's dead all right. She always told me she could smell bullshit from a mile away. I don't know if that holds true now, do you, officer?" Sam starts laughing again and Mink takes him by the shoulders. "Boy," he says forcefully. "For the record, this is your mother, correct?"

Sam stops laughing, clears his throat, and says, "Yes. That's Mom."

Maurice shakes his head sadly and says, "Aide de Dieu ce gosse." God help this kid.

Mink says, "Huh? I wish you'd speak English, little man."

Maurice ignores Mink and ushers everyone out of the room and back into the hallway. Sam collapses onto the floor at Daisy's feet. As Mink and Maurice rush to his aid, Randy Travis's voice echoes throughout the hallway: I'm gonna love you…forever and ever…forever and ever amen…

 

tartled awake by his ringing cell phone, for a second, Ike has no idea where he is. He looks out the Malibu's driver's side window and sees a trailer, then another, then another. Oh yeah, thinks Ike, now I remember. Fuck. "Yeah," he says into the phone.

"Wake up, princess. It's after seven. I let you sleepy-sleepy, because I know you're a grouchy-wouchy if you don't get your rest."

"Louie?"

"What?'

"Shut the fuck up."

"As usual, I'll ignore that. The kid's back at his trailer. You slept through their arrival. I've already talked to Daisy—she's the girlfriend. She's with the kid in the trailer. The crew is in a van not a mile away. Everything's a go," says Louie, his voice excited and high.

"Was it—"

"The mom? Oh yeah. She's dead. Of course it was her. Cut and dry. It had to be. Oh oh, Beater, get this: she got her nose wacked off. Can you believe that? Her nose. That's some sick shit. Blaghhhh! Anyway, get to the trailer; make sure the kid is clothed. If the kid's crying, well shit, now that's OK. Here me, Beater? If he's got the waterworks going, great. But I'd rather him not be sobbing it up uncontrollably, now. I don't want any hysterical shit going on. We want him to look happy, for Christ's sake. Happy crying: that's what we want."

"The kid's mother just died. Jesus, Louie, you stupid fucker. You want happy crying? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Why're people so sensitive about their mommies? I hated my bitch of a mother. Fuck her. Your damn basset hound—smelly little fucker—could fuck her up her dead asshole, for all I care. Fuck her. Fuck my mommy."

Ike sighs then smirks. He's heard it all three hundred times before. "You're right, you're right, Louie. Everybody should hate their mothers. They ain't nothing but stupid whores. Maggot shit is worth more than mothers. I agree, Louie—wholeheartedly."

"Mock me, Wife Beater. Go ahead and mock me."

"Tell the crew I'll have the kid prepped and ready. No worries," says Ike, trying to will away his sleep-bone.

"I love you, baby," says Louie.

"Back at you, baby. Back at you."

Ike puts his cell phone in a jacket pocket, steps out of the Malibu and walks to the front door of the Hayter trailer. Ike doesn't bother knocking. He goes on in. The TV is smattered with blood and turned on to a rerun of Family Ties. There's no sign of Sam or Daisy. The trailer is just as sordid and disgusting as it was several hours ago. Ike sees a cockroach scurry across the top of the cigarette butt laden top of the TV. How can people live like this? thinks Ike. "Kid! Sam! It's Beat—uh—it's Ike. Where are you?"

No answer.

Ike checks every room. No Sam. No Daisy. The place stinks like rotten eggs. Ike takes out his phone and dials Louis, who answers on the second ring. "You always gotta call me while I'm on the shitter, don'tcha, Beater?"

"The kid's not here. I feel like I need some RID or something. This place is nastier than that ten-gallon fish tank of yours you clean once every ten years."

"My fish like to eat here own shit—what can I say? Where's Daisy? She's not there either?"

Ike can definitely feel something crawling up his damned leg. He rakes one leg up and down the other. "She's not here. Nobody's here. The crew'll be here in how long?" Ike looks at his watch. "Oh shit! The crew'll be here in fifteen minutes! We're going live in twenty! You should'a woke my ass up, Louie!"

"Lemme think, Beater. Lemme think," answers Louis, flushing the toilet.

 

nbeknownst to Ike, Daisy is eating a bowl of Golden Grahams in her granny's trailer. She left Sam watching an episode of Family Ties. Sam likes Meredith Baxter's character. Her long blond hair is a picnic on a sunny fall day, temperature maybe seventy five, perfect, a bit of a breeze blowing. Sam has swallowed the last of his acid—maybe ten or twelve hits. He laughs at Alex, at dumb Nick, Mallory's boyfriend, at wacky Skippy, Alex's best friend. Sam digs out his Case, opens the blade, still laughing at the TV. He presses the pad of his right index finger onto the tip of the blade, and he likes the cotton candy sweetness of his blood, traversing down the back of this throat from his tongue, bitten in time with the knife's blade making contact with the bone in his finger. Sam glances at his bleeding finger, the blade still grinding into the bone, and he laughs. Fingertips always bleed like motherfuckers but not enough to drain the body dry—at least not completely. Sam refocuses on Alex and that stupid briefcase he always carries. Sam giggles: Alex is such a fucking trip!

Sam pulls out the blade; he plunges his spouting finger into his mouth; he swallows himself again and again; the acidic saltiness of his blood fills his empty tummy. For no reason save Daffy-Duck, Sam thinks he's swallowing rotten oysters, pungent, disgusting rotten motherfucking oysters that emerge without stop from his bleeding finger. His stomach bucks. Sam covers his mouth with an open hand and blood flies across the room, splattering Alex and Mallory Keaton, fucking up their family ties. Sam sees assassins carrying machine guns and wearing pantyhose over their heads, and they storm into the Keaton's kitchen and shoot Alex and Mallory in their heads, splattering their brains across the front of the TV. Sam starts shaking and crying. Bloody snot bubbles out of his nose. His bare torso is, hairless and pale, anathema to everything comprising Maganum P.I. Sam's pink dots for nipples are covered with blood. His mouth is open wide, silently screaming. Sam loses his pants, his underwear; he plunges the Case into his left thigh, again, down to the bone. Sam twists the blade and he's sees a blinding white light, at the end of which is his mother, on her knees sucking goateed Johnny, black leather clad and standing in front of her, stroking her head. He's moaning and looking upward, toward the sky. Sam blinks and sees his mother and Johnny entwined in a hard fuck, Johnny shoving it to her from behind, and, all the while, they are sliding on a blue rubber mat down Crazyhorse Campground's world's largest waterslide.

Sam rolls from the couch and still bleeding profusely, he walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator door, takes a drink from the half-gallon jug of milk that is two days out of date, leaving a circle of blood around jug's mouth. Sam drops the milk onto the floor and then staggers out the sliding glass door and onto the deck. The air feels good against his bare ass. Sam, bleeding, pisses off the deck. After a couple of seconds, he wobbles and falls face first off the deck and into the plastic pool, mid-piss. The obviously used rubber snakes its way onto his bareback, resting like a castaway collapsed on the strange beach of a strange island. Sam is motionless. His eyes are wide open, and in the dirty rain water he doesn't see muck and old Big Mac wrappers. He sees his mother, noseless, lying on a stainless steel table. The hole in her face grows wider and wider until there is no head at all, just a deep chasm, at the bottom of which flows a thin winding river, looking like a blue string of thread. Sam opens his arms wide, pretending to be a flying airplane, and he jumps into the chasm, falling his way toward the far away river.

 

ke, desperate to find Sam, storms out the back door and sees Sam floating face first in the plastic pool, both his feet dangling over the edge. The water looks like Cherry Kool-Aid. Sam is still.

Ike runs to Sam, yanks him out of the water, checks for a pulse. Thankfully, Sam's heartbeat is strong. The color in his face is a warm red, matching closely the Kool-Aid colored water in the pool. Sam smiles. Sam stretches out his arms, for he is freefalling toward the river, his hair swept back, and his sliced skin healing, closing, and smoothing over.

"You're a millionaire, you little bastard. You better be fucking breathing."

An ambulance's siren screams in the distance.

The winding river, a blue artery in the bucolic grounds in which it winds amidst weeping willows and manicured lawns, sucks Sam faster and faster to its surface. The sun, acting the part a jaundiced baby's curing lamp, warms his back and soothes his cuts, taking away the stings and the bites. Sam's head enters the water and he opens his mouth, gulping as fast as he can, willing his lungs to full with water, begging for death in this clear water.

Ike slaps Sam's face. "Wake up, you crazy little bitch."

Sam opens his eyes to a blurry Oz-like consortium of worried looking people, staring down onto his naked body as if he were Dorothy just awakened from her sleep; Sam is cradled in Ike's thick arms. Daisy is running her hand through Sam's wet hair. An EMT covers Sam with a blanket.
A camera crew emerges from around the side of the trailer. A man with slicked-back black hair and very white teeth sticks a microphone in Sam's face and says, "Sam Malone, you're the winner of the 2002 Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes."

Watching the action from a closed circuit TV, Louis says to himself, This is some quality shit.

 

[END]

© Chris Duncan 2002