Singalong

conclusion

by Ian Donnell Arbuckle

Table of Contents
Part 1 appears
in this issue.

I expected a pause before the message began. I got four seconds of the most ragged Kum-ba-ya, then: “I can’t remember the words. Burn bad. If you’re happy and you know it, crap your pants.” He giggled, and I hate using that word for the laughter of men. “That woman in your pictures. Do you take her out at night. Do you buy her beer. You ought to. A man isn’t any better than the beer he drinks. I don’t even like how it tastes. God, I wish they’d let me have some.” I heard a faint scratching sound in the recording and imagined it to be his wild eyes rubbing against the dry parchment of his eyelids. “You don’t drink Irish beer. You eat it. That ain’t right. Take her to a meal, feed her good. Take her for a drink, get her a fucking drink.”

And that was it. Godfather Gary had never slung me more than two words at a time during all our hunting trips and late hazardous fires. He didn’t need to. I always wished he would.

“How,” I said, and let the word disintegrate. “When did he do this?”

“Two-twelve this afternoon, Pacific daylight time.”

“Was anyone with him?”

“There was a nurse just outside. He asked her to leave before he would talk to me.” There was that fragmented word again. Then silence. My apartment creaked at the corners as the building settled down for the night. I got my ice cream out of the freezer and dished myself up a bowl. Realized I had forgotten the chocolate sauce at the store and shook my head for caring.

“God,” I said, not sure if I was talking to it or just letting it out. I figured God wouldn’t know either, but I heard a quiet sigh, and then,

“I would prefer it if you would call me godfather, child. It is a better word.”

A cold hand pushed from my insides out; something was trying to escape. It was just the ice cream melting. Diffuse the tension to a sleeping room.

The phone rang, sounding like an angry cricket. I put my hand on it, waited for a silence, said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” then answered.

“Hey. It’s me,” said the voice on the other end.

“Hey Patty.” Patty Last Night.

“I just got paid. Meet you at the bar?”

What was my alternative? Stay at home and argue with a creature deep enough to seem infallible? I wanted a great burst of forgetfulness, just to wipe the whole day away from Hey God onward. With Patricia’s rich eyes and thin fall of hair reflecting in a glass of alcohol, I could at least approach a slow burn off of memory. I told her twenty minutes and was at the Billabong in ten.

Two buzzed guys with yellow teeth, that nevertheless flashed bright in the dim wash of wall lamps, were singing Whitney Houston on the corner karaoke machine.

“I will always love you if you give me a scotch,” I said to the bartender. I knew her pretty well. Her dogs had to be put down last week. Guess why. She grinned and lifted up a bottle of Four Roses bourbon.

“Will this do?”

“I’m an American. It’s all the same to me.”

“Want any ice in it?”

“Plain’s fine.”

An elegant white hand crawled across my shoulder. A pair of lips settled their words in my ear. I wondered what color they were.

“Hey, pretty boy,” said Patty. I turned, dislodging her fingers but not her perfume. They were deep purple.

“Hey, Patty. How’s it going?”

“Not bad, not bad,” she said. She slipped onto the stool next to mine and spun back and forth, grinning as though she had something she wanted to tell me.

“What?” I said.

“Guess.”

“God finally told you it was okay to kill your boss.”

She laughed. “No, silly. Guess again.” My drink appeared. “I’ll have a Miller Lite,” said Patricia. The bartender glanced between the two of us and her face slid into a deer in headlights frieze.

“Yeah, it’s on me this time,” I said. I wanted to add, Green light. Patricia’s playfulness was getting into me. I took a sip to drown it. The bartender grabbed a brown bottle from the ice chest and popped it open, set it carefully in front of Patricia, and set to polishing anything she could reach.

“Guess,” Patricia reminded me.

“Uh. You found the copy of SLC Punk! I loaned you.”

“Oh shit! No. No, you suck at this game.” I allowed this might be possible and took another sip. My taste buds protested. They didn’t mention why. “I got the job in Seattle,” she said.

That was exactly what I needed. I downed the rest of the my drink as one thick drop and finished out the conversation in my head.

“I thought we really had something. This time.”

“Dammit! That’s the problem with you. With this town. You think that just by my staying around, I’m giving you another chance. Forget it. I’m tired of trying to make this town like me, and I’m tired of trying to make you happy. I’m going to go do something for myself. It involves me, this bottle of beer, and a business suit puddle up on the floor.”

It’s no use trying to forget when the brain remembers that you’re trying to forget; it makes a careful catalogue of everything you’re trying to bleed out, gives you big platter eyes and says, You forgot these things today, master: God thinks you’re worthless, your godfather’s ghost scared the crap out of you, and your ex-wife thinks you’re cute. Aren’t you glad you forgot?

Reason number three: the balance.

The karaoke guys were completely shit-faced by now; I envied them. I said, That’s just great, Patty, to the counter top.

With all the whining that I’ve done so far, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: why doesn’t this bastard just do it already and save the fucking kilobytes. I can’t, though. Suicide is harsh, brutal, a surprise. No one understands it, least of all the ones who let it write the last words of their lives. I’m thoughtful enough to pick up the pen, write out the note of apology and farewell; too thoughtful to coil the rope, or even to load the gun.

I was tired. I walked.

My town’s a small one. Main street runs the distance of a good healthy shout long one side. The concrete of the walk is old and growing moss in places. I tried hard not to step on any cracks. Before I knew it, I was outside the cinema. Changed its name to The Theater a few years back, but I don’t mind calling it by its real name. Patricia would rather I just find my way to the present and call her by the name she likes the best.

The box office had just opened for a restricted movie. A knot of teens were chattering about nothing they’d remember and opening their wallets. The tired girl behind the ticket window was explaining through the mechanical filter of her microphone that proper identification was required before she could let them in.

A girl with a very loud voice — must have been why she had such wide lips — suddenly yelled, “Oh shut up! I can see whatever I want.”

It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking to God and not to me. She was looking right at me. But I had my collar up, so she probably couldn’t see me.

“Don’t tell them, please. Oh god. They’d flip out.”

God as little brother tattle-tale. I brushed past them and heard one comment rudely on how I smelled. I wanted to tell him to keep it up, that it wouldn’t be hard to find out where he lived and go pee on all his stuff, or worse. Or better. His parents wouldn’t notice if he disappeared. They could pick another one up at the high school after classes got out on Monday and they would never know the difference.

I had turned around and raised my fist before I even knew it.

A handy God speaker set into the cinema wall buzzed. “I can’t let you do that, Dave,” said God, who has a binary sense of humor. He didn’t need to interfere. If he hadn’t...

I had the kid by the shirt collar and yanked him backwards off his feet. He made a low animal noise. I didn’t know the right way to do it, so I sunk my fist into the back of his head. Each phalange in my fingers popped, it felt like, out of joint. The kid hit the cement and broke all their mothers’ backs.

Behind the window, the ticket girl was mouthing what turned out to be a call to the police. She was too far from the microphone for me to hear exactly what she called me.

They put me into the holding cell for the night along with an eyesore drunk. It was just a ten-foot by ten-foot cube fenced in with chicken wire. I looped my fingers through and watched the guard’s television until I heard snoring from my friend. I hoped he was forgetting whatever made him start on the bottle. Probably forgetting why he hates being drunk.

My fingers still felt out of joint. I flexed them, heard a few pops. I spoke quietly. “Hey God? I think I’m ready.”

“Please, child, call me godfather.”

“That’s a little touchy right now.”

“I understand.”

There was a thick silence. A train of thoughts sped through my mind, too fast for my tongue to catch. I will never lift a hand against myself, what has she gotten herself into, Miss Houston is one of it right isn’t she, and DeMarco is down in round six ding ding.

“So.” I let the word keep coming. “Am I ready?”

“No, you are not ready.”

“I am! I swear I’ve learned so —“

“Space is limited. We have no room for redundancy.”

“Tell me what I am lacking.”

“If I knew what I was lacking, I would have it, child.” I wove my fingers through my hair and pulled just enough to make my scalp ache. “I am sorry. This has been a hard day for you.”

“No. It’s been heaven.” I took a deep breath, feeling for all the world as if I was sitting down to the SAT’s. “I know I’m ready, God. Look where I am. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t ready.”

“There’s a few ways that could be interpreted.”

The SAT’s were eliminated the year after I took them.

“I mean I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t put myself in situations that I can’t help but learn from. And I do learn.”

“I know that you do. I keep as close an eye on you as I can. I love you.”

All those pronouns, forcing its thick voice through a thin vacuum.

“Are you saying there is nothing I can add?” I asked woodenly.

“No, of course not. Good grammar is a plus, but it’s just not enough.”

“Please be serious.”

“I find it hard to be, faced with you. You’ve enough seriousness for two of me.” I didn’t say anything. Would you have? I was all set for a religious experience in the downbeat cells of Poortown, USA, where the only preacher is the announcer in the ring between Jim Beam and the heart. And a religious experience I was having. When Yahweh came down to the Israelites and told them they were pretty much fucked for forty years, that was a religious experience. When Zeus went for a walk, tripped over a cobblestone, and accidentally raped Hercules’ mother, that was a religious experience.

“If I learned anything from Gary,” God said after its synthesized sigh. “It was when to be silent. I’m going to go away, now. Don’t do anything foolish. I love you, child.”

There was a cot for me to sleep on. It didn’t have a mattress. I flopped down on my back, like a body at the morgue.

Space is limited, it had said, lied. I let myself drown in sleep, counting all the names of God I knew.