Note: GwI is proud to present "barely," Chapter One of Calvin Haul's novel The Judas Hole. We're running the chapter in three segments. The opening segment appears below; part two will run next week.
My boss thinks I'm training for a marathon. He also thinks I'm a Republican because he invited me to a fundraiser and I'm not the kind of guy to reject the invitation of an immediate superior. Breakfast cost $500 a plate. Scrambled eggs with cheese, crostini, fruit parfait, juice and coffee. The Arabica was bold and delicious but now I'm on the books with the GOP. They mailed me a card. I guess that makes me a member.
What an f'n fool I am to spend that kind of money on a political process that isn't even tax-deductible. What idiocy to pretend I'm training for a marathon when my only extra-curricular activity is smoking at the bar. Mr. Tink announced BizPro's charity race during a management meeting last month.
"And I expect everyone to participate," he finished with a snort while fingering his paisley tie.
Employees who can't run a marathon should sign up for the 5k. There's a bicycle division for people who can't run. And if my fat ass can't pedal downhill to feed some hungry children? I signed on for the marathon because there's more advantage to pretending when you pretend to go all the way. My goal is to raise a couple hundred by enlisting donations for every mile I pretend to run - all 26 plus of them. I'm not sure how to bluff the race or vote for the radical libertarian I really want to support in the upcoming election.
I'm 23% body fat. I was born on a mosquito-heavy evening in June. I walk with a slant because I jumped and landed wrong. On dark days my heart knows that anarchy is the only way. What else is there to say? The race and elections are just a few weeks away. I dangle running shoes from my computer bag and travel to work with a rolled towel in my hand to prove that I've been training.
"Looks like you're taking it down to fighting weight," Tink tugs his tie on his way to the can.
I smile and nod and tug back.
*
My name is Doug but I go by Douglas because I like the extra syllable. I'm in charge of public relations at BizPro Co. International, a company of marginal repute in the no longer wild west. People mistake me for being affable because I leverage social graces. My primary defense mechanism is to feign cordiality with a disingenuous but convincing smile. Since learning the trick I've endeared myself to the enemy on countless occasions. I've grinned my way out of arrest, getting beaten to a pulp at the bar and being shot by some suckwad in a cowboy hat while hitching through Helena.
I'm so good at expressing goodwill that corporate America pays me almost six figures to smile. I make $99,999.99 a year. Tink promised me $100,000 during my last evaluation. He looked me in the eye. We shook. Now my gross salary over 26 pay periods is a cent short. I did the math. The company rounds up to my disadvantage. This financial impropriety will cost BizPro thousands of dollars in bogus receipts and lavish dinners that I expense in an attempt to recoup my humor.
I carry my Republican donor card because sooner or later Tink will ask to see it. I carry a damp towel to prove I showered at the gym. I pick at my running shoes because no one questions scuffs. The day before the race I'll sprain my ankle or break a toe. Tink won't blink at an ice pack and what miser would ask for a charitable refund after so much sweating on the treadmill?
If I knew myself I'd hate myself.
dear god,
please bless the crazy and forgive logic.
bring whoever deserves heaven home. please
bless us to accept each other's shortcomings
but if we can't, please bless me with the
first blow.
Amen I think, sitting in a basement bar. It's mid-afternoon. The bartender is slouching under a fuzzy TV. If the lovely, loving and loveable Wife finds out that I ditched work to drink? I'm a goner. Traffic is hectic. I take the train. I dodge the ticket master to ride for free. I'm a goner anyway.
It's sunny and I imagine Wife is vacuuming between those narrow shafts of light that fall through the living room blinds onto our oriental rug this time of day. Even if she isn't vacuuming, she'll lie and say she was.
"I've been vacuuming all day," she'll say before asking where I've been.
"Work."
"Did you go to the bar?"
"No. I came straight home."
Then she'll accuse me of lying. What authority does she have to level such a nasty allegation? She accuses me even when she's wrong. Even when I go straight home. Even when my first sip of the day was yesterday, which isn't often.
Today I'll pre-empt Wife by saying I didn't go to the bar with utter sincerity. When she questions my honesty I'll make an indignant facial expression because sometimes an indignant response is all it takes to cloak a lie in believability. Other times she second-guesses me. Like that afternoon she called from across the street. I'd stopped to shake off the day. It was loud so I stepped outside.
"Hallo?"
"I called work but no one could find you."
"Um, I just got out of a very important meeting."
"You're still at work?"
"Yes, I'm still at work."
Honk, honk, honk.
I look up. Wife bears her teeth from across the street. My knee-jerk reaction is to cloak my lie in believability with an indignant response.
"Why the hell do you call and ask if I'm at work, all the while knowing I'm not?"
I shake my finger at her as cars move and stop between us. She disconnects, flips me off and tears through the intersection.
*
I'm mostly honest which means I only lie about little stuff. I do not lie about fidelity or my word. If I say I won't, I usually don't. If I say I will, I usually do. It's what I don't say that catches me. Like, I won't tell Wife that I'll come straight home. Even when she pleads. Then I go to the bar. When she asks if I went to the bar I beat around the bush. She prods. I say no. She flips me off. I assure her. She accuses me of lying.
"But I never said I wouldn't."
"You said so this morning."
"No, you said so this morning."
"What's the difference?"
I quit drinking for good twenty years ago and have been mostly drunk since. Since my first sip I've quit three hundred and seventy-seven times -- which, with deep universal oddity, mirrors the number of rejections I received from poetry editors when I thought I was a poet. Between sobriety and poetry I have seven hundred fifty-four failures. I calculate these failures as less than one-fourth my overall failures but among my most significant disappointments because bad poetry makes for awful listening and what's worse than breaking a sober promise hundreds upon hundreds of times?
I console myself by focusing on the failure of others:
- Professional athletes fail to make the shot.
- Clergymen fail in the eyes of god.
- Spelling bee finalists fail to spell the word.
Sometimes I want people around me to fail but mostly I want everyone to win. I like it when the victor is humble and the loser is a close second. I don't like it when someone wins by a lot or loses by a lot. I loathe gloaters and am emotionally moved by an honorable loss. Even so, I play to cream the competition.
*
It's dark in this basement bar. A dingy lack of light almost sets the tone. Then another greedy sip refreshes my mood. I pull a pen from behind my ear and begin:
Oh healthy prison, gather criminals into your concrete yards and let the rest of us roam free. Let us perk up in coffee bars, stumble from hay barn brawls, take sanctuary in pinko bookstores while memorizing the credos of American revolutionaries during a late lunch of black coffee and munchies. Plus cream. Plus sugar. Please.
To the poetic mind, everything is poetical. Oh Longfellow, oh Wino, oh Billy The Kid, let us linger to and fro. Let us whisper "Michelangelo" to the public from high pavilions. Let us descend upon them with stallions and six shooters. Let's bust up this two-bit town. Save hard working women and their kids. Hog tie the rest of them. Make every man beg.
Let us rise, I write.
Let us get it on.
Calvin Haul's writing has appeared in a number of journals. Some of his plays have hit the stage. He describes THE JUDAS HOLE as his first "publishable" novel. He's currently working on something else and looking for representation. Read Part Two of "Barely" here and Part Three here.
Archived at http://www.girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/short/65-ch-0809-barely1
