Here Are The Links to Parts 1-3 in Case You Need To Play Catch-Up, & The Video Above Is Me Explaining My Absence. I hope you understand. I Love You
Here We Rest Part 4
I sat there and looked at where that scar used to be for way too long.
Hell, how long had it been? I wondered. Which made me realize if I was still sitting there wondering all of this, then it was probably taking even longer than I thought.
I pulled my eyes up real quick and made eye contact with Sheriff Stevens. I was sure I had just freaked everybody out, but I tried to remember what that shrink told me once: “Your paranoia gives you a false sense of reality. You make the worst out of every situation in your brain. No matter what, I promise you it’s not as bad as you think.”
Sheila then asked if she could speak to me outside.
“What the fuck are you doing? You are freaking everybody out!” she said.
Goddammit, I knew it. One thing that fucking shrink never said, but should have, is that just because I’m crazy don’t mean I ain’t right sometimes.
“Look, it’s nothing,” I said. “I guess I’m still just a little bit in shock from what I saw earlier.”
“Are you still drinking?” she asked.
“Still drinking? What do you mean still drinking? Don’t you mean ‘am I drinking again?’ I sobered up, remember? I told you I would—” I said, not sure if I even believed myself.
“Listen, Sonny Boy—”
“Oh, goddammit, so I’m still Sonny Boy to you too, huh?”
She took a step back. “Listen—”
“Chickaluki is a very small town, with only one liquor store, might I remind you,” I interjected, trying to change the subject, “and it’s about goddamn time, too. Hell, everybody on the council knew this entire town was drunks, but for years we had to go across state lines to get anything stronger than a beer, and our hard-earned money went with us instead of going back into the community. I mean, it’s just plum ignorance at this point. Of course, they say things only get better one funeral at a time.”
She started shaking her fists and running in place, trying not to start punching me.
“Goddammit, quit acting like it’s fine. Quit acting like nothing is wrong with you. Quit acting, period!”
This stung. I could say nothing. I let her continue.
“You ain’t stopped drinking. That’s just what you tell people when they offer you one and you’re too hungover from the night before.”
Goddamn, she knew me. I hated that.
“And you and the word ‘sober’ ain’t been acquainted since I’ve known you. You seem to think that just means you ain’t falling-down drunk every goddamn night. Even when you do manage to put the bottle down for longer than College Football Bowl Week, you’ll still sneak a toot with Bubba. And that ‘emergency bottle’ you kept in the cabinet for your back pain? I’m not an idiot. I could hear you refill it every week. Sorry to finally let you know that even though you gave it your best effort, our sink ain’t that loud when you run it, Sonny Boy!”
I didn’t have anything to say. And even if I did, it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Goodbye, Sheila. I won’t bother you no more,” I finally said as I walked away.
She protested briefly, but I know that was only out of some sort of guilt. Guilt that she didn’t even deserve to feel. She’d given me a dressing-down. She’d been mean. But weren’t a speck of it a lie.
There are some things I’m about to tell you that don’t make sense. At least in the way we’ve come to understand the world. But it’s possible that your world isn’t my world. That’s how it has felt for the most part of my life, but something really snapped loose around this period. I don’t know if it was what Sheila said to me or what. There’s clearly been something wrong with me as long as I can remember, but it had at least always felt like it was rooted in the real world.
Now, I’m not so sure.
I got in my truck and began crying. Deep, panic-soaked sobs. The kind of crying you do as a kid when you can’t use your words. And I couldn’t. I was hyperventilating, but at least no one was there to see it. I don’t think I could have stomached that. My air conditioner was shot, which wasn’t helping. My tears and sweat became one, and I was drenched from head to toe with misery and shame.
I flicked on the radio, and it was on a station I didn’t recognize. “Mack the Knife” was playing, and somehow I knew all the words. They poured out of me like I was being asked to sing at gunpoint.
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight
You know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, oh, wears old Macheath, babe
So there’s never, never a trace of red
“Mack the Knife” is such a popular song that it would almost be statistically impossible for a man of my age not to have heard it many times over. But this was the first time I’d actually paid attention to the lyrics, and they were somehow coming out of my mouth. I’d never known this song was about a murderer. The name should give it away, but I’d never thought too much into it. It’s absolutely insane that this song was such a mainstream hit, played at parties with people of all ages, no parent ever concerned about what their kid was hearing. Lucy and Ricky couldn’t even share the same bed or say the word “pregnant” on air, but this song about a knife-wielding criminal from across the pond is a family-friendly tune so long as it’s got a big band playing behind it.
Through the duration of the song, I had calmed down and stopped crying. Against better judgment, I thought that maybe stopping for a beer would make me feel better. It no doubt would in the short term.
I grabbed my rearview mirror and pulled it toward the driver’s side so I could check the situation with my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to know I was crying, or have them think that I was stoned out of my mind—even though people probably thought that anyway.
The mirror short-circuited.
I’m aware that mirrors can’t do that, but I’m just telling you what I saw. It glitched back and forth, and when it finally came to rest, the Me that was in the mirror was not the Me I knew. I was wearing a newsboy hat, and I had quite the tan.
My truck was not my truck, either. I appeared to be in some classic from the thirties. I got out, and sure enough, it was a bright yellow Packard with black trim and yellow wheels. I had dreamed about this car before, and that’s surely what I was doing then. Except I could feel the heat coming off the engine. Lucid dreams are a real thing, and I’ve had experiences with them, but you can’t actually feel anything. That’s a pretty standard rule for dreaming.
Of course, it’s possible that I was dreaming this feeling. The brain is complex. Even mine. I reckon it could simulate a feeling close enough that it could trick itself while deep in REM.
I walked around for a minute and tried to figure out where I was in my dream. I was parked in a vacant gravel lot, and there was no sign of civilization as far as my pitiful eyes could see. I really needed to get them checked. Sheila was always on my ass about that. But there was no time for that at the moment.
I crested a slight hill and noticed a gas station. A filling station, rather. That’s what they called ’em back in the old days where I’m from, and in this dream, I was clearly in the old days. There were men outside helping people, and they were dressed like the Maytag Man. This was like a scene from a movie that the DMT was firing out of my brain. I thought it was quite possible I was dying.
The people outside acknowledged my existence with a grin and a tip of the cap. The worker inside gave me an odd look as I gazed around at the shelves of motor oil and other liquids in glass containers. It looked less like a store for humans and their cars and more like a place robots would go to get groceries.
“Sonny Boy, how’s the family?” the man said from behind the counter.
What an odd dream this is. I figured since I was in the middle of a lucid state, I’d try to have some fun with it. I thought about taking off and flying, but it wasn’t working. I stood there with my eyes fixed on the heavens—or in this case, the ceiling of the filling station and bounced up and down on my tiptoes, grunting and trying to make it happen. Nothing doing.
The man looked at me oddly.
“Sorry, just trying to get my stretches in. The family is fine. I’ll tell them you asked about them.”
I walked outside, and it was about ten degrees hotter. Is it possible to have a panic attack in a dream? Because if so, that’s what felt like was happening to me.
I got back in my Packard and headed down a dirt road. I could see Hilltop Mountain, and Okaloosa Creek was on my left, so geography-wise, I knew where I was. But the billboard with that fat guy selling insurance was nowhere in sight. I could smell the fumes coming off my car, and I could smell the honeysuckle in the air. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the sky was the most beautiful I had ever seen it.
I kept driving along until, on the side of the road, I saw a man broken down in a garbage truck. Dream or no dream, I was always taught to help, so I got out and planned to ask him if there was anything I could do for him.
His head was buried in the engine and I couldn’t tell who it was, but I knew it was a man because no matter what century I was in, in Chickaluki, women rarely wore overalls. I didn’t want to frighten him. I scare very easily, so if I was working on my car and someone came up to try to talk to me and I wasn’t expecting them, I would probably jump and hit my head on the hood. I tried to treat others the way I would want to be treated, even though, between you and me, that seems to be going out of fashion.
I dragged my feet on the gravel so as to make some light noise that wasn’t intimidating. I heard him drop the wrench, and then he closed the hood.
Before he had a chance to say anything, I said, “Need a hand there, mister?”
His face turned white. “Sonny Boy?” he asked, as if he knew me, but it had been a very long time since he’d seen me.
I responded, “Yessir. Sorry if I don’t recognize you, I’m not good with faces.”
He looked me up and down like he was a baseball scout and I was a future prospect. “Sonny Boy?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir, that’s my name,” I said, though if I’m being honest, in the confusion that had just occurred over the last hour, I wasn’t so sure what was true and what wasn’t.
He began sweating, and his lip was quivering.
“I’m about to ask you something,” he said in about as serious a tone as one could muster.
“I’m all ears, sir.”
“You are Sonny Boy, there is no doubt about that. But the fact that you don’t know who I am leads me to believe that you aren’t the right one.”
I’m not the right one? What the hell does that mean? I’ve certainly heard that from women in my entire life, but they didn’t look petrified when they said it. Matter of fact, some of them looked downright happy to be letting me down and upsetting me.
“Sir, you’ll have to excuse me for sounding rude,” I said, “but I didn’t catch a question in there, did I?”
“Sonny Boy. When we were in Korea, what was our favorite bar?”
“Sir, I don’t know if this is some sort of trick question, but I’ve never been to Korea in my life.”
The man froze. “That’s what I was afraid of. Quick. Get in the back of your car and lay down, and don’t say a fuckin’ word.”
He hopped in the driver’s seat of my Packard and fired it up. I stared at him for what felt like an eternity. All I wanted to do was wake up, but it became increasingly clear that that wasn’t gonna happen.
“Do you want to live, goddamnit? Get in the back of the car!”
I could really use that beer about now.
We hauled ass, and whether it was from exhaustion or something else,hell possibly mystical for all I know, I blacked out.
To be continued...
More Later
Corey
Don’t like recurring payments but still wanna support? I take one time donations, PBS style, of any amount big or small on PayPal at ButterCreamCorey@gmail.com
And on Venmo @ButterCreamCorey
QR codes for both are below! Thank you for your support!
