FIC Moving Pictures: Measure of a Man
Author: Kita (Email Kita0610@aol.com)
Pairing: JM/VK if you squint real hard
Rating: R
Story Notes: This is a sequel of sorts to my fic, Snapshots: Son of a Preacher Man, which was written long ago and far away in a little LJ community called Cracktrailer. I hope this story can also stand on its own.
Jimmy is mine, Vince is shared with Ros_Fod, and apparently, their original story made Witling sad enough that she invented a Mary Sue for them. Mary Sue, as all good fic readers know, is usually a pejorative term used to describe a character so perfect in every way, she must be an author self-insert. Witling is much too good a writer for that. She gave the boys a foster mother, named her Mary Sue, and then went to town with the angst, thereby knocking all possible clichés ass over the teakettle.
Witling’s version of similar events can be found HERE.
Moving Pictures is Jimmy’s side of the story.
You might want to read the first fic, Snapshots. You might want to read the Mary Sue ‘verse that Witling created. You might even want to read the RPG that takes place in the LJ community, Swimming Hole. But it’s my hope, as I mention above, that this story stands well enough alone, and can be judged for good or ill on its own merits.
I welcome comments and critique of any sort in this LJ, or by email.
Thanks for taking a chance on what is essentially original fic disguised as RPS, disguised as AU. In my head, Jimmy looks like THIS, Vince looks like THIS, and the thought of them doing THIS makes me very happy.
Hope you enjoy.
Moving Pictures: Measure of a Man
Jimmy called off work the day that Vince went away to college. Skipped his own classes at the JC, and went to The Catfish Bait to get shitfaced instead.
He sat at the bar all afternoon, surrounded only by the seriously committed drunks, smoking an entire pack of Marlboro Lights and staring at the engine grease under his fingernails. Less than a year of working on cars, but already the stains on his skin were never going to come out.
Mercedes happened in the door right after five, her brown and white waitress uniform unbuttoned enough so he could see the outline of a satin red bra underneath. Everybody with a dick in the bar stared at her.
She sat down next to Jimmy, folding her hands in front of her like they were in a pew at church.
“Jimbo,” she said, eyeing his swollen bottom lip. “Been a long time. You look kinda like hell.”
Jimmy stared at her tits for a few more seconds before regaining some composure. “Don’t call me that.”
“Whatever you say, Jimbo,” she said, laying one of her hands over his. Her nails were as pink as her mouth. She smelled like lip gloss and fried food.
Taking another swallow of beer, Jimmy tried to remember if he’d ever fucked her.
Thirty minutes later back at her place, the answer was yes.
Mercedes still had her red bra on when Jimmy staggered out of her apartment the next day.
He went back home stinking of sex mixed with cheap drugstore perfume, but Mary Sue didn’t say anything about his sorry state. She handed Jimmy a towel on his way to the bathroom, and he wondered if she’d already talked to Vince.
In the shower, he realized he hadn’t kissed Mercedes once all night. He blamed the cut across his mouth.
Mary Sue fixed him some dinner with actual meat in it, and set four aspirins down next to his plate. “Eat up, honey,” she said, pouring him a soda.
His anger at being mothered took him by surprise; it was old, sudden, and sour.
“Not hungry.” He pushed the plate back, pocketed the aspirin.
Mary Sue looked about to argue with him when the phone rang. She picked it up, turning her back to Jimmy. Her tone -- all ruffle-edged, flannel sheets, woolen sweaters - never had bothered Vince.
Jimmy took care not to answer the phone after that.
So Mary Sue took the call three weeks later. “It’s Mercedes,” she told him. “She sounds upset.”
Jimmy couldn’t find it in him to be surprised she was pregnant.
They got married at the county courthouse in summer. Mercedes’ good dress clung to her hips.
Jimmy had a hard time sleeping in her bed at first; with the tiny purple flowers all over the blanket, happy yellow paint on the walls, and no smelly dog curled around his feet.
But Mercedes was warm and soft at night, smaller than him in all the right places. The curve of her round belly under his hand felt like something he ought to protect. She had dark eyes; when he would lie down next to her, he could look right into them, without having to think of anyone else.
Mercedes gave birth to Callie before the holidays. Vince came home to Mary Sue’s for Winter Break. Jimmy stayed away. It was the first holiday he’d spent without either of them since he was a kid, but Jimmy had a family of his own now. Any time he’d start thinking about going to see Vince, that’s what he’d say to himself. He said it a lot.
Vince stayed up at school for Spring Break.
They found the lump in Mercedes’ breast on the first of April.
Mary Sue took Callie to her place whenever she was able, so Jimmy could tend to Mercedes. He dropped out of school. He brought her hot soup on his lunch break, read to her from shitty romance novels at night, and held her hair back while she puked into the bathtub.
When her hair all fell out she wore kerchiefs, saying she didn’t want Callie to remember her mama as a bald woman. Mercedes’ momma spent a lot of time at their place. She didn’t say much, but she’d stare at Jimmy in a way that told him Mercedes being sick was his fault.
The cancer went to Mercedes’ bones in August, and by September, Jimmy couldn’t recognize her. She’d swim up from her morphine when he’d hold her hand, smiling with her eyes half-shut.
“Callie’s here,” he’d say. She’d smile some more while he held Callie up. He wanted to say I love you. He wished like hell it were true.
“You’re a good man, Jimbo,” she’d say.
He wished like hell that were true too.
The day they buried her, Mary Sue asked, “You want me to call-“
“Fuck, no,” Jimmy said, taking Callie out of her arms.
They spent the night at Mary Sue’s. Callie cried.
At first, Jimmy figured Callie missed her mama. Little as she was, she had to know something was wrong. Had to realize the big hands (calloused, rough, stinking like gasoline and glycerin soap) holding her now didn’t really know what they were doing.
She was always good for Mary Sue. “An angel all day,” Mary Sue would say, when Jimmy picked Callie up from her place after work. By the time they got home, Callie would be crying so hard she’d vomit.
He kept remembering how Mercedes asked him, minutes after Callie was born, “Don’t you just love her, Jimmy?”
He’d looked down at this hopelessly small, wrinkled white thing, which seemed more like an uncooked chicken than anything else.
“Don’t really know her yet,” he’d said.
When he looked at Callie now, she didn’t seem like a chicken anymore. She was actually starting to look like her mama, or like one of those dolls they keep under glass. She was a real pretty baby, everyone said. Jimmy would nod, saying thanks like he’d had something to do with it.
One night-curling-into-morning, Jimmy sat on the back stoop listening to Callie wail. She was working herself into a fine frenzy, any minute now she was going to puke. Jimmy smoked his third cigarette; ground the stub of it down into one of the cracked clay flowerpots littering the porch. Mercedes had grown a small jungle out there. When she got sick, most of her plants got sick right along with her. Jimmy had no idea how to care for flowers.
Sure enough, Callie finally howled so hard, she threw up.
Jimmy went back into her room without bothering to turn on a light. He changed Callie into a different pink t-shirt, put her back in her crib, and wiped down the linoleum floor with some Windex.
When he was finished, he stared at her for a while, waiting. Her shrill crying kept on; woke his daddy's voice inside of him, reminded him how she'd been an accident after all, told him he knew real well how to make her shut up.
Jimmy hadn’t laid eyes on his daddy in years. He only knew the old man was even alive when he’d cash the check Jimmy’d send him the end of every month. It was crazy how he could still hear that voice.
He stuffed all of Callie’s onesies into her diaper bag, along with her green fish blanket, three clean bottles, and a couple cans of formula. Then he strapped Callie into her car seat, and drove her to Mary Sue’s.
Callie screamed the whole way, her little face redder than a bruise and her voice hoarse. She’d gotten her temper from Jimmy, anyway. He turned the radio up, sung out loud to Johnny Cash to drown the sound of her fury. Pulled into Mary Sue’s driveway at four in the AM, and cut the ignition.
Katy started barking. Mary Sue came to the front door, rumpled and frowning. She was wearing the ratty old purple bathrobe Jimmy’d bought for her when he was fifteen. He kept telling her he’d buy her a new damn robe, but she refused to throw it away, said it had ‘sentimental value’.
Jimmy walked up to the porch with the diaper bag slung over one shoulder, Callie curled like a football in his other arm. At some point, she’d finally gone quiet, and for a second, he felt this weird flutter in his chest, almost like panic. But when he glanced down at her, she was breathing. Staring up at him with wet, blue eyes and snot on her upper lip.
“Jimmy,” Mary Sue said, running down the steps, “what’s wrong? Is it the baby?”
Jimmy had his mouth open, ready to say how he couldn’t fucking do this. He smelled the poison brewing under his skin, same as when he was younger, alone and rattlesnake hungry all the time. The stink inside of him that made him need to draw first blood, made him break a kid’s nose once for looking at him wrong, break another one’s head wide open for saying words he shouldn’t.
Callie was tiny and she couldn’t fight back. She’d be so easy for him to break.
Then Callie made this sound- hell, she’d probably made it before, probably dozens of times but Jimmy had never really listened- it was this sound like “spffnuh”, totally meaningless and stupid. He looked at her. She looked back. Blinked her eyes, tucked her fist into his t-shirt, and fell asleep.
“Uh,” he said, looking between Callie and Mary Sue. Both of them pink faced, all mussed, and quietly waiting on Jimmy to do whatever he was gonna do.
Jimmy tightened his grip on Callie. She “spffnuh’d” again. Her eyes stayed shut, but he could feel her quiver in his grip.
He had never held her this long without her crying.
“Nope. Nope, I just…needed some formula is all,” Jimmy said. He shuffled his feet a bit, realized his boots were untied.
Mary Sue blinked at him. “Well, don’t stand out here, you’ll catch your death. Come on in, I’ve got two or three cans in the kitchen.”
She waved him toward the house. Jimmy didn’t move.
Callie had the same kind of hair Jimmy did when he was a kid. All wild and growing in a million directions, like weeds. Jimmy’d started shaving his head around third grade. He reckoned those curls would look all right on a girl, though.
“Ya know, I think I mighta remembered where I have a can,” Jimmy said, looking up.
Mary Sue blinked some more.
“So, I’m gonna go ahead and take Callie back home now.”
Mary Sue eyed the bulging diaper bag and nodded slowly. She waved from the front porch like Jimmy was going off to war as he pulled away.
Callie slept the whole ride home. Stayed asleep when Jimmy put her back into her crib, and tucked her under the lime green blanket.
He patted her head. “Sorry. Looks like you’re stuck with me, Callie girl,” he said.
For a while he stood there, watching her sleep. Then he went out back to water the plants.
Friday nights at 6PM, Mary Sue played mah-jongg.
A cloud of clove cigarette smoke thicker than the mosquitoes hung around the back door. Jimmy waved it away as he stepped into the kitchen. From her spot on the braided rug, Katy thumped her tail at him. He reached down to scratch her ear. She was starting to go gray around the muzzle.
“You’re home late, sweetie,” Mary Sue said. Jimmy hadn’t lived in Mary Sue’s house for two years now, but she still called it his home.
He looked at the clock. 8:30. “Yea, sorry,” he said. “Place got busy and I could use the overtime.”
Three pair of bi-focalled eyes stared at Jimmy. He leaned over the sink to wash his hands. The last time he walked in on Mary Sue and her friends, he found himself having to fend off blind dates with two nieces and someone’s best friends’ youngest daughter.
(“Callie needs a mama.”
“Callie has a mama,” Jimmy said, grabbing the diaper bag off the table. “She’s dead.”
“They meant well,” Mary Sue told him the next day, although she sounded apologetic. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
Jimmy watched Callie stuff a toy in her mouth. “I ain’t.”
Mary Sue pursed her lips at him, but she didn’t argue the point.)
“That’s all right. The baby’s asleep, though.” Callie was nearly two years old, but Mary Sue still called her the baby. “If you want, you can let her stay here. She could spend the night; you can pick her up tomorrow morning. Give you a chance to sleep late?”
Jimmy couldn’t remember when he’d last slept past six on a weekend. “Yea, all right,” he said.
“Take some of the cold chicken from the fridge.”
Katy eyed him and the chicken. “Think I’ll take her with,” he said, rubbing her belly with his foot.
Mary Sue looked up from her tiles and studied him. “Sure,” she said finally, nodding. “Her food’s in the cupboard.”
When they got home, he fed Katy some of the chicken. Ate the rest of it himself, while standing over the sink. Stripped off his work boots and t-shirt, and fell into bed wearing his pants. Katy jumped on top of his legs, settling her face against the blankets with a snort. Jimmy stroked her rough-and-feather fur, and shut his eyes against the lights from the bar across the street.
He woke to lemon yellow sun hot on his chest, making him sweat. Katy waggled her hips at him, Jimmy stumbled to the front door to let her out to pee. He felt groggy from too much sleep, and he had a vague notion he’d dreamt badly, but couldn’t remember anything much beyond fists and bruises. He really wanted some coffee.
He showered and drove to Mary Sue’s, Katy in the seat next to him with her tongue hanging out the side window.
When he opened the kitchen door, Mary Sue was sitting at her table, staring at the phone. Her face was red, like she’d been crying. Callie squealed, and started tossing her Cheerios onto the floor. Jimmy scooped her up. She smelled like her bath. He felt something twist inside him.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s Vince- he’s sick,” Mary Sue said.
The day Vince came home from college, Jimmy worked sixteen hours straight through. By the time his boss tossed him out of the garage, Jimmy couldn’t feel his fingertips, and he stank like the inside of a diesel engine.
He went home to shower and change clothes; it was dark when he got to Mary Sue’s place. A big foreign car with expired plates had his spot in the drive.
Callie lay curled on the living room couch, one arm flung over her head in stage actress pose. Mary Sue sat in the old recliner, quilt around her knees, remote control in her hand, snoring.
The television hummed at him, he reached out and clicked it off. The only light now was a dim yellow trail from underneath the door of the guest bedroom.
Jimmy toed off his boots and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.
Mary Sue had pulled the twin beds apart when Jimmy and Vince moved out, and stuck the nightstand with its ugly table lamp between them. The posters of rock stars and girls holding beers came down, replaced by paintings of flowers and cats in pale colors. She’d burned incense in there, recently, but Jimmy could smell old gym shoes under the too-sweet lilac.
Vince’s jeans sat in a heap by his bed. He was folded around himself under two thick blankets, and he didn’t move when Jimmy stepped inside, and shut the door.
Jimmy stood over him, trying to figure what to do with his hands.
Vince was too tall for the mattress; one bent knee poked out from the covers. He shifted on the bed, and Jimmy could see the long line of a pale leg, a bony hip, the elastic band of bright white BVDs. He looked away.
Vince shifted again, made a noise like startled game. Sat up in the bed, wide-eyed and blind, hair sticking to his cheeks.
“Hey,” Jimmy said quietly, “hey, it’s just me.”
Vince turned toward Jimmy’s voice. The veins in Vince’s neck, blue as robin’s eggs, rattled with his pulse. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were too long. Jimmy couldn’t see his fingers.
“Jimmy?”
“Yea,” he said, throat full of something bitter; wondering what kind of sick made you whiter than sheets, gave you nightmares, and bruises under your eyes.
“Hi,” Vince said then, with a sudden smile that made Jimmy need to sit.
He crouched by the edge of the bed, and stared at Vince’s face. Vince looked like a stick drawing of himself, all lines and angles, scribbled dark and angry. But he was smiling at Jimmy like they were fifteen and on summer break, and they could go anywhere and be anything, and no one would mess with Vince because Jimmy was there.
Jimmy swallowed. “Did someone- what happened?”
That smile went away just as fast. Vince lay back down on the bed, pulled his leg under the blanket, shut his eyes. His eyelids were paper-thin.
“I’m so godamned tired, Jimmy.”
“Ok,” Jimmy said. “Ok, sleep then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yea?” Vince looked up at him, desperate and grateful all at once, and Jimmy wanted to shake him for never learning how to hide what he felt.
He nodded instead.
“Ok,” Vince whispered, falling back to sleep.
“Your daddy used to do that with his peas,” Mary Sue said. Callie was using her Minnie Mouse spoon to bury her vegetables inside the mashed potatoes.
“That’s ‘cause peas are an abomination,” Jimmy said, kissing Callie’s forehead. “Ain’t I right, Callie girl?”
He eyed the plate at the far end of the table, but Mary Sue slid into the empty seat. Jimmy shot her a look, then sat down in the chair next to Vince.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Vince looked better than he had the night before; there was a bit of color to his face and his hair was combed. He made faces at Callie and she giggled at him from behind her napkin.
“She’s great,” he said. “She’s really beautiful.” His voice was better too, bigger, more sure.
“Thanks,” Jimmy replied automatically.
It set his teeth on edge, this sitting here with Vince and Mary Sue, having dinner together, talking about peas, like nothing had changed. Outside, it was near eighty degrees, but Vince had a long sleeved flannel shirt on.
Mary Sue couldn’t shut up when she was nervous. “They helped in the garden today. Fresh air did them both good,” she was saying to Jimmy.
Then she pointed her fork at Vince, who was mostly pushing everything on his plate around. “Eat your supper, honey.”
Vince smiled. “Yea, I am.” Jimmy watched his hands shake as he took a bite of potato. When he finally swallowed it down he squeezed his eyes shut, before clamping one hand over his mouth, and running for the bathroom.
Jimmy went after him. Found Vince huddled around the toilet, throwing up even though it looked like he didn’t have much left in him to give. Jimmy leaned over and held his hair back.
“Done?” he asked, when Vince had stopped heaving long enough to drag a shaky wet breath.
Vince shook his head. So Jimmy flushed the toilet, and sat on the tile next to him while he got sicker.
He heard himself whispering stupid meaningless things while he ran his hand up and down Vince’s spine. But inside his head it was his daddy, telling him how these new sicknesses were God’s punishment for queers.
Jimmy pressed the heel of his palms to his eyes.
“I’m a’right,” Vince said after a while, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.
Jimmy got to his feet and let the tap water fill the little cup next to the sink. The cup was blue, and shaped like a frog. “Think Mary Sue’s gone round the bend,” he said, frowning at it, then handing it to Vince.
Vince smiled. His wrist poked out of his shirtsleeve when he reached for the glass, the bones knobby and sharp. Vince used to bite himself there when he was younger. When they first got to Mary Sue’s, and he missed his momma so hard he couldn’t stop from crying at night. Then he’d crawl into Jimmy’s bed.
If Jimmy looked hard enough at Vince’s forearm he could still see teeth marks. He grabbed the glass from Vince’s hand.
“Wait- Jimmy- stop-” Vince was nearly shouting, twisting his body and tugging his arm away, but Jimmy had already rolled up the flannel sleeve and seen the tracks. A sort of neatly arranged pattern of holes, and Jimmy could imagine Vince sitting somewhere in Atlanta, carefully lining up a needle with his own skin.
Red, everything went red, Jimmy heard his heart thudding between his eyes, felt those baby bird bones of Vince’s shift and crunch under his grip.
“What the fuck is that?” So mad he actually spit, little bits of fury on Vince’s cheek.
“What’s it look like?” Vince’s teeth were clenched too.
Jimmy dropped his hand. “Looks like you’re a fucking idiot,” he said, turning his back. “What’s his name?”
“What?”
“His name. The son of a bitch gave you that shit.” Jimmy was holding on to the sink so tight, his knuckles were whiter than the porcelain.
Vince stood up, wiped his face on the towel. “Juliette,” he said.
Jimmy laughed, short and mean as a dog bark, and slammed the bathroom door behind him when he left.
Mary Sue was sitting at the table, but she’d stopped eating.
“You lied to me,” Jimmy said. He couldn’t look at her. It was work to keep his hands gentle, while he unstrapped Callie from her high chair.
“I didn’t lie. He’s sick.”
“He ain’t fucking sick!”
Callie’s eyes went round and big.
“He ain’t fucking sick,” Jimmy repeated, quieter now, but he felt the muscle under his jaw jump with the effort not to hurt something. Someone. He put Callie down and started stuffing her things into her bag. “He did that. To himself. And you knew it; you let him in this house, you let him around my kid.”
Mary Sue shoved her chair back, standing up, and Katy beat her tail against the floor. “You wait one minute. That’s Vince you’re talking about, not some stranger.”
“Oh I know who he is. He’s the selfish little prick who had it all handed to him and he blew it.”
“Jimmy! Stop it. Now.” It was the closest he’d ever heard Mary Sue come to raising her voice at him. It made his fists close up at his sides like cornered snakes.
“No, no, I ain’t gonna lie for him too,” Jimmy said, his voice low. Calm and peaceful-like. Same way his daddy sounded when he got real angry.
(come here little boy, not gonna hurt you)
“He needs to stand on his own feet for a change, grow up. Be some kind of a man.”
Mary Sue threw her napkin on the table. “That’s what you told him to make him leave in the first place, isn’t it? Look how well that worked out.”
Jimmy could see she regretted saying it right off, could see the look of surprise on her face through the haze of red which was everywhere now. But it had him by the neck, and it was all he could do to take Callie and go before he used those fists.
“Fuck you,” he said as he walked out of her house.
Back home, with Callie safe in bed, it took him three hours and five beers to come down. The phone rang all night, until he ripped the cord out of the wall.
That month, he took the money to his daddy in person.
The porch light was on when Jimmy walked up the drive. Mary Sue’s cigarette smoke didn’t seem to be chasing the bugs away from it; a handful of moths were flinging themselves at the uncovered bulb, fluttering off stunned and stupid only to try getting close again a second later.
A plastic bag of what looked like dog food and chew toys lay at Mary Sue’s feet.
“What’s all this junk?” Jimmy asked.
Mary Sue didn’t answer him. There were little lines around her mouth Jimmy hadn’t seen before. He didn’t like them. He stared at the ground and said, “I came by ‘cause I wanna tell you some stuff. I’m sorry about leaving that way the other night.”
“Ok,” Mary Sue said.
It’d been three weeks since he’d stormed out, cursing and scratching. Maybe she wasn’t gonna make this any easier on him than he deserved.
“Only I dunno - how to do this is all.”
“Sit down, Jimmy.”
He could smell her supper cooking through the screen. It smelled lousy, like usual. It made his mouth water. He sat down on the step beneath her, and lit a cigarette.
“I been talking with Vig the last couple weeks,” Jimmy said, then kept going before she could comment, “And I think maybe he was right about a few things after all.”
“That so?”
“I know you don’t like him, but he’s always had a real clear idea about right and wrong. And he makes sense, he don’t mince words.”
“It’s not about liking him.” Mary Sue said slowly. “He’s your daddy. I don’t like what it is he’s capable of.”
Jimmy shrugged. “He’s just an old man now. It ain’t right to keep his grandkid from him.”
Mary Sue eyed Jimmy’s cigarette. “You’re going to let him around Callie? Alone?”
“Look, I didn’t come here to start trouble-“ Jimmy said, standing up again. He ground his cigarette under his boot heel.
“Are you going to let him around Callie?” she repeated. Her voice was steady, but he remembered how it shook the first and only time she saw the marks left on his back. They didn’t talk about it after; not the scars, not the nightmares, not the money. “You going to let him do to her what he did to you?”
“That was a long time ago, Mary Sue. He’s not gonna- anyway, I wanted to tell you I can’t come round here no more. And I can’t bring Callie by either. Not for a while, anyway.”
Mary Sue didn’t say anything. When Jimmy chanced another look at her face, she didn’t look angry. Just worn.
“Ok,” she said, holding on to the railing and standing up. She pointed to the bag, in the dirt by Jimmy’s feet. “Do me a favor, take that over to the animal shelter, would you?”
Jimmy frowned. “Katy’s stuff? Why?”
“She had a stroke a few days back. We had to put her down.”
It took him a minute to understand. By that time, Mary Sue had the screen door open. Jimmy could hear the T.V. going. Vince was watching cartoons.
“Shit, Mary Sue, I didn’t-“
“Take care of yourself, Jimmy,” she said. “Please do that.”
She stood there for a second like maybe she was going to touch him, but then she didn’t. She rubbed her cigarette out in the metal ashtray, walked inside, and shut the door.
Jimmy was busy thinking about Katy. That was the excuse he’d give himself later anyway, when he was face down on the floor, ears ringing and head swimming. His brain was too full grieving a dog to keep track of how many beers Vig swallowed.
So Vig was already working on his fifth when he opened the fridge to look for more. He grabbed the six-pack out from behind the milk, and sat back down, stiff and uncomfortable. Like he was too big for the chair, or the room.
Callie started flinging Cheerios.
“Stop it, honey,” Jimmy said, holding her hand. He took the bowl away and put her juice cup in front of her instead. She let out a howl.
“Shh, here.” Jimmy handed her the bowl of Cheerios again. “In your mouth, not the floor.”
“Sure cries a lot,” Vig said, popping open the next bottle of Budweiser. His jaw twitched in a way Jimmy recognized from the inside.
Jimmy shrugged. “She’s a baby. Here.” He set a plate of stew in front of Vig.
“Ain’t never too young to learn manners,” Vig said. His face was creased and his hair was thin, but that voice hadn’t changed.
“Suppose,” Jimmy said, not looking up from his plate.
He didn’t see the punch coming.
No one threw a fist like Jimmy’s old man. Jimmy had remembered that, same as he’d remembered how to navigate Vig’s moods in order to avoid the worst of them. He’d remembered what kind of cigarettes Vig liked after dinner, and how it was best not to say Mary Sue’s name out loud. But Jimmy had forgotten that Vig never needed a reason when he was drunk. Jimmy had forgotten a lot of things.
(“I don’t wanna go tomorrow,” Vince said.
The alley was wet with rain, the sky full of black and blue. Not one visible star up there, but Jimmy figured it for about 2 AM. Vince’s bus was coming at six.
Jimmy could see he was struggling not to cry.
“You gotta,” Jimmy told him for the umpteenth time. “You’re the smart one, you gotta do this. Go, and don’t fuck it up.”
“That’s not even true,” Vince crept closer. He smelled like Mary Sue’s lemon laundry detergent. Jimmy tried to imagine waking up the next morning, alone, under the blanket with that same smell. “And Atlanta’s so far from here. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you every day.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jimmy said, taking a step back.
“What’s wrong?” Vince pressed in, and Jimmy leaned away again, like they were doing some kind of stupid dance step.
“Jesus Christ, nothing’s wrong. Why’re you being such a baby about this?”
“I’m not.” Vince dropped his hands to his sides. Curled his fingers in. Jimmy was always telling him how if he hit someone with the wrong kind of fist, he’d break his own thumbs.
“Yea, you are,” Jimmy said. “Look at you, you’re gonna stand here in public and fucking cry. Grow the fuck up.”
Vince blinked. “Why are you being such an asshole?” His voice was flat now, and his face was blank. Vince was already gone; he just didn’t know it yet.
It made the words come easy. “Cause I’m tired of babysitting you like some kinda faggot.”)
“You can’t even take a punch no more,” Vig was saying from somewhere over Jimmy’s head. The floor was cool against his cheek. “Always told you living with them people would turn you faggot.”
Jimmy swallowed his own blood. Then he climbed to his feet. Callie was screaming.
(He’d seen Vince’s swing, heard the suck of air before it connected. Behind his eyes, a single bright flash before everything went black for a second. Everybody knew Jimmy had a glass jaw. If you could swing and manage a good hit, he’d go down. Best not be standing there when he got up again though.
Vince was standing there. Tears and shock on his face, hand outstretched to help Jimmy up.
“God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m really fucking sorry.”
Jimmy stared at Vince’s hand. Stood up on his own, and spit a wad of sharp red blood onto the gravel by Vince’s sneakers.
“Reckon you best get out of my fucking face, Vincent.”
Vince swallowed, kept his hand out. Didn’t back away. “Please, Jimmy,” he said.
Jimmy turned around, rested his closed fist on the brick wall and shut his eyes against the red. Everything inside of him shook. The blood in his mouth tasted like venom. “Reckon you best do it now.”
He heard the shuffle of Vince’s feet against the pavement, and waited until they’d faded a bit before turning around again. “Vince,” he hollered.
Vince stopped and looked back, ashamed, hopeful. The hope was by far the worst, and right then Jimmy hated Vince, just a bit.
Jimmy stared at him. “Don’t let me see you again.”)
Jimmy looked down and realized he was holding a broken bottle in his fist, holding it straight out, pointed at his daddy’s belly. Vig was backing out of the kitchen as Jimmy came toward him, turning around only to kick down the front door when he left.
Tires squealed over gravel. Callie was still screaming. Even in this neighborhood, someone was bound to call the cops any minute. Jimmy dropped the bottle to the floor, leaned over the sink and spit. Blood and skin, and half of one of his back teeth clattered against the drain.
More squealing of tires, and bright lights shining through the busted door. Jimmy swore, and grabbed for the bottle again. He was finding it hard to stay on his feet.
“Jimmy- Jesus, honey, I’m sorry I should have- I’m sorry-”
Jimmy had no idea what Mary Sue was apologizing for, but the way her voice sounded when she caught sight of his face made him turn away.
Callie stopped screaming daddy,, started yelling for Mary Sue instead.
“Callie- did he-”
“No,” Jimmy said, gripping the countertop hard. “I wasn’t gonna let him touch her.”
The edge of his vision blurred gray. All he could think was how he’d gone and put Callie into the same viper pit he grew up in himself, stuck his kid in the way of all that rage and harm because he couldn’t face his own devils down. After everything, that right there made him no different than Vig.
“Jimmy, let me see your face,” Mary Sue said, around Callie’s wailing and snuffling.
“Get out of here.” Jimmy covered his lip with his fist. “Just take her and go.”
“Jimmy-” He flinched at Mary Sue’s hand, light on his shoulder, and she bit back some kind of noise. It made his belly hurt worse than his face.
“All right. I’ll take her with me. You’ll come later? You’re not fixing to go after him, are you?”
Jimmy didn’t answer, and Callie kept on hollering, making grabbing motions in the air with her fat little fists. Mary Sue gathered her up. Jimmy didn’t let himself sink into a chair until he heard the truck pull away.
He sat in the dark of the kitchen for a long while, holding a bag of ice to the side of his face. Dizzy with the sound of hornets buzzing up his spine, and the ping of his blood hitting the steel drain of the sink. Vig had been wearing some kind of heavy ring. Jimmy was going to need stitches.
The front door was torn off its hinge, a couple of beer bottles and two shattered plates stuck to the linoleum floor with clumps of cold stew. Callie’s doll lay there in the middle of the mess, her blue glass eyes staring at him. Jimmy picked the doll up, sat her carefully on Callie’s high chair.
He was so fucking tired.
He was half way down the drive before he realized he’d left the house; at some point, his brain had mercifully shut itself off and decided to follow his feet. The air was thick and damp; cooling down the closer he got toward the river. A couple more steps and he was standing by the cluster of trees leading to the old swimming hole. He didn’t come out this far anymore.
A pair of lights blinked back at him from beyond the ridge. It was Mary Sue’s truck, and she’d left the headlights on. Except it couldn’t be Mary Sue, she was home with Callie.
He climbed down into the clearing, his feet sinking into the grass. It didn’t seem fair how the place looked the same.
When Jimmy was a boy, before Vince, before Mary Sue, he kept a box of treasures underneath his bed. Shiny rocks and shed snake skins, pictures from magazines of places he was never gonna see, and tests he’d gotten A’s on. He wasn’t sure where any of that stuff had gone to. Wasn’t sure when his life stopped seeming to him like this collection of snapshots, half color moments of ice pick joy and pain he could take out and touch when he was alone.
He’d woken up one day and suddenly everything around him, everything inside him, was rolling on by faster and faster, a movie reel on skip start speed. It scared him sometimes; it made him feel old.
A part of him wished he could go back to the way he used to be, armored tough in piss and swagger. Mostly, he was just tired.
Vince was sitting in the grass.
And suddenly Jimmy felt like he might cry. He’d done a stupid fucking thing in a whole list of stupid fucking things, and they couldn’t come undone. His face hurt like his teeth had been kicked in. But looking at Vince was gonna make him cry. Jimmy hadn’t even cried when his wife died. He was a shitty fucking human being.
Vince looked like he might die himself if Jimmy didn’t say something.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Vince’s voice was quiet.
“What’re you doing here?”
Vince stared at Jimmy, at his lip and the side of his face. It made Jimmy want to duck his head, shove his fists into his pockets. He sat down on the wet grass near Vince instead, and wrapped his arms around his folded knees.
“Was fixing to go kill your daddy,” Vince said, “Changed my mind.”
Jimmy nodded. “So that fancy college education was good for somethin’.”
Vince reached a hand out, slow and careful, hovered his fingers around Jimmy’s cheek. Dropped it to the ground.
“God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything, I-” Vince was crying now, looking ashamed of it.
“Shh, shhh. Don’t,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. It didn’t make sense how people were so damn keen on apologizing to him, when he was the one who kept fucking things up- in the alley with Vince, in the bar with Mercedes, on the porch with Mary Sue.
He cupped Vince’s chin like he did Callie’s, gentle and careful-sweet. Breathed in, and then he was grabbing Vince close because he couldn’t stop, inhaling tears and smoke, sad and wispy things, Vince.
“It’s Ok, it’s all ok, everything is gonna be ok, I’m sorry too, I’m sorry.”
Vince crumpled, like the sight of Jimmy crying was the worst thing he’d ever seen; he wiped at Jimmy’s cheeks then his own, tugging the hem of his shirt out of his pants to scrub the tears off. He caught Jimmy’s lip with it, made him flinch.
“Sorry,” he said again, but Jimmy didn’t hear it. He was staring at Vince’s mouth. Right here, right in front of him, shining with sweat and spit. Vince’s breath tasted like peanut butter and Marlboro’s, like river water and summertime, like everything Jimmy thought he’d left under his childhood bed.
Vince kissed Jimmy back, hard and hungry, clung to his shoulders all the way down into the dirt. Leaves and wet grass caught in Vince’s hair, blood from Jimmy’s lip smeared across Vince’s cheek and chin and neck.
Vince’s hands scrabbled at Jimmy’s belt buckle. He swore, tugging at the leather, his knuckles brushing Jimmy’s dick through his jeans, making Jimmy groan.
“God, come on,” Vince said, and Jimmy shoved his hands away, sat up and undid the belt himself. He held on to Vince’s wrist, lifted his arm toward the faint light. Tiny pin pricks across his skin now, barely-there marks, which wouldn’t ever fade.
“The hell were you thinking?”
Vince tried to pull his arm back, looked like he might cry again, but he kept on looking Jimmy in the eye. “Wasn’t, really. That was kinda the point.”
Jimmy nodded, undid Vince’s belt. “Ain’t done it since you got back?”
Vince shook his head and gasped as Jimmy’s hand slid beneath his waistband. Vince was too skinny. Jimmy didn’t really have to unzip his fly, but he did anyway.
Vince tugged against the grip Jimmy still had on his arm. Lifted his fingers to Jimmy’s face, let them touch this time.
“Why’d you let him?” he said, rubbing his thumb over Jimmy’s bottom lip. “I mean, after all this time?”
“Same reason as you, I guess,” Jimmy said, walking his fingers down the inside of Vince’s other arm. “Got tired of thinking.”
“You ever wish things could just be simple again?” Vince whispered, as he reached for Jimmy’s fly and tugged at the buttons.
“All the time,” Jimmy said, breathing deep. Vince’s cheeks were pink. He’d cut his hair. “You’re not gonna do that shit no more, are you?”
“Jesus, Jimmy, no.” Vince arched up, breathless, and begging without words. Jimmy didn’t move. Vince opened his eyes, and held out his hand, littlest finger curled in. “Swear.”
Jimmy felt his smile start somewhere in his chest. He grabbed Vince’s pinky with his own. “Swear back,” he said.
Maybe it was stupid, and he wasn’t sure what he was swearing to, exactly, but none of that really mattered. He just wanted to be worthy of the way Vince was looking at him.
Vince’s grip was strong on the back of Jimmy’s neck, pulling him down. He shoved his tongue inside Jimmy’s mouth, like he didn’t care there was blood everywhere, like he wanted to swallow Jimmy, stupid and angry bits, whole. His dick throbbed in Jimmy’s hand.
The press of Vince’s hand on his own dick was familiar and inevitable; made Jimmy feel small in the same way looking at the stars did, big in the way he always felt when Vince made those fragile sounds, and showed Jimmy his neck.
Jimmy buried his face there when he came, in that soft, hollow space, gritty with tears and dirt. Vince bit Jimmy’s shoulder through his t-shirt, shuddering so hard Jimmy thought he might be crying again. He pulled back and Vince was smiling, wide and goofy.
Jimmy blinked. Flopped onto his back and dug into his jeans pockets with shaky fingers. Lit two cigarettes and handed one to Vince. They lay there, listening to the frogs and watching the smoke curl towards the sky, until Jimmy couldn’t be still anymore.
“Ready?” he asked, fixing his jeans.
After a minute, Vince said, “Guess so.”
It took Vince a while to get his clothes back together, then he turned toward Jimmy. “Want some help, maybe? Cleaning up the mess at your place?”
“Nah,” Jimmy said. “Reckon we can just save all that kinda shit for tomorrow.”
He tossed his cigarette toward the water and stood, holding his hand out to help Vince back onto his feet.
They walked up the hill together; Jimmy’s head light and empty, Vince’s breath coming in short little bursts by his ear. The back of Vince’s hand brushed Jimmy’s as they crested the climb. He looked at Jimmy again, and bit his bottom lip where Jimmy’s blood had dried on him in dark slashes. Jimmy tugged on Vince’s fingers, squeezing them in his fist. In the steady shine of the truck’s headlights, they cast one long and endless shadow.
-End