dispatch litareview

ISSN #1932-2372
issue four
05/15/2009
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"Novelty" ©2009 Mike Boyle

typefaces: Magellan, Accolade, Friz Quadrata, and Adobe Caslon

christycall.com
 NOVELTY
BY MIKE BOYLE
Horace saw her trudging to the bus stop and heard pre­
dawn things: the train rolling down the tracks four blocks
away, ambient crickets. He looked further, to the
east—just above her head, some light. He was about to say
the sun follows you when he saw a fresh bruise on her eye.

“That’s gonna go black,” he said.

“I’m living a cartoon,” April said.

The highway ran by the tracks. You could hear it. A

long moan.

“Just gimme the word,” he told her, not the first

time.

“No. Thanks but no. We’ll work it out. He said he

was sorry.” She produced a pipe from her purse, placed
weed in the bowl, and lit it. “Want some?”

“No.”

“Here, you want some.”

He took a hit and said, “Here they come.” Who

knew where they came from or who they were? She was
the only person he talked to at the bus stop.

When the bus came, they boarded and sat together.

 “Will I see you tonight?” April asked when his stop
came.

He left the bus and walked the half­mile to the printing

plant which squatted on the edge of town by the marsh.
He remembered his wife drooling on the pillow as he left.
He liked to look at her sleeping. He’d left a pot of coffee
and a rose stolen from the neighbors' bush in a cup. He
walked past the rusted City Beautiful memorial, the
burned­out homes never rebuilt after the flood.

He arrived at the converted World War II nail

factory with machines almost as old. The day rolled out
like days do. He occasionally looked up at the security
windows with steel mesh. No steel mesh on outside
windows. Owner looking down, sometimes not.
Sometimes left, then appeared at the back door hawking
for slackers. The antics of his boss and coworkers were
tiresome. Dead air. The things people did in dead air, in
places that didn’t matter.

After work, he walked downtown. Wednesday

happy hour at the Palookaville Inn was Cult of Seinfeld.
Jack, who everyone called Stubby, ran the Palookaville
Inn. It was his notion that everything in life was covered
in the glorious episodes of Seinfeld. He took his usual seat
at the bar and said “Hey Stubby.” Stubby grunted, got his
beer, and went back to looking at the big screen. The
Bubble Boy episode was on. Armand, the plumber, was
sitting at the other side of the bar, and he went to sit
beside him.
 “Been here all day,” Armand said.

“Laid off again?”

“Temporary, they say. Things slow is all. You?”

“We’re busy.”

“You got it made.”

“Sure.”

“Did I tell you how my wife saved me from a life of

homosexuality?”

“Yeah. That still working?”

“Days like this are bad. I saw the boys getting on

the school bus, had some thoughts, then came here.”

“Maybe you need church. My wife has me going.

She's Catholic again.”

“Again?”

“We both grew up Catholic, now she’s back on it.”

“How’s that?”

“I go for the wafers.”

“Communion. They call it communion.”

“Okay.”

“Starsky and Hutch lunchbox?”

 “My nephew gave it to me.”

“How is he?”

“Thirty, still living with his mom. They let him go

outside without a helmet now.”

“So big.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. It is kind of funny though. You have to admit

that.”

“A little.”

He drank a few beers with Armand and left. He

walked to the bus stop, got on the bus, and looked out
the window at methadone row. The ghetto and the youth
with their pants falling off their asses. She had the car. He
thought about how wildlife in zoos would not mate in
captivity.

When children wouldn’t come, she got Bumper,

who jumped around and salivated. He grabbed the bag
and took Bumper for her walk. The rock & roll people
were hanging on the deck outside the townhouse up the
block, like they did. Twenty­something old­money Alvin
owned the place, had a band called The Fractured. Big on
the local scene. Bumper decided it was a good place,
squatted.

He picked the shit up with the bag.

“Hey!” someone yelled. Look at that guy! Hey, dog­

shit man!”

“Hey! I’m about to take a shit!”

“Cut it out, asshole. That’s Race,” Alvin said. “Hey

Race!”

“Hey Alvin.”

“You wanna come over after you get your dog

home? We’re having a party.”

“Sure,” he said. Bumper jumped and barked. “I gotta

let her run a bit.”

“Come back.”

He cut Bumper’s leash. She ran to where some

houses once stood. He followed, carrying the shit bag
through vines and brush and into the clearing. He winged
the bag. Bumper ran after it, brought it back. Threw it and
again she ran after it, brought it back, happy. He tossed
the bag into the brush, said no, but she ran after it,
brought it back. He kicked up dirt, buried it. “You dumb
dog.”

They went home. Bumper flopped satisfied on her

basement cushion. He was going to do something.
Someone needed to. He walked upstairs. His wife had
been making little post­it notes all over the house. Novelty
had been on the fridge for months. Underneath it,
another note saying, Don’t drink. There’s dinner in the crock
pot and pie in the fridge. It had been bad for some time but
she’d made an effort. The beef stew was satisfactory. It
became night with the cricket sounds and beef stew. He
saw her on the second­shift assembly line putting
transistors into circuit boards for eight wasted dollars an
hour. He saw her fingers.

He walked back down the alley. They had a fire

going.

“Race!” Alvin yelled. “I was just telling my posse

about you and your exploits in the 80’s. Beer?”

He kept walking to the apartment building April

lived in and went up, beat on the door.

“Race!” April said when she opened the door.

“Is that your bus stop boyfriend?” When he looked

at her, he didn’t see her. He saw someone else from long
ago. Abused, tossed away to grandparents, so shy she
barely spoke. That’s when time stopped, because Race
saw everything.

“I’ma have a talk with your husband,” he said

brushing past April just as the white lights came on.
Everyone says see red, but the lights are so white and the
voice in his head was yelling but what came from his
mouth was quiet: “C’mere Joey. There’s a Joey.” The face
in the white light suddenly bloody, “What’cha doin’ Joey?
Bleeding? There’s a Joey. Can Joey fly of’n the balcony?”

Later, thinking again, he didn’t remember if Joey

flew or he felt the cold steel on the back of his head first.
April was there with the pistol saying things and Joey was
two floors down, sprawled by the trash cans.

“I hope this doesn’t ruin our bus stop relationship,”

he said seriously.

“Get out,” she said.

Alvin and posse around the fire pit. He found a seat in the
circle. There were sirens. A police cruiser crept down the
alley, stopping at his back door. The officer got out and
knocked.

“What’s going on, man?”

“Dunno.”

The officer knocked louder with the butt of his

flashlight. “Horace Jones! You in there? Come out, Horace
Jones!”

“Maybe you’d better?”

“Nah. Beer?”

Someone went to the house for more drink. They

sat around the pit. The cruiser came back up the alley,
shined a light, “Anybody know Horace Jones, from 2207?”

“Nope,” Race said.

“I do. He’s a real creep,” Alvin said.

“You know where he is?”

“Ain’t seen him in weeks.”

 The cruiser disappeared up the block, shining the
light.

“Fucking pig,” Alvin said.

The fire cracked. Someone put an empty beer case

upside down on it. They watched it smoke, go red and
orange in flames, then lift off with a woof. They watched it
float and disintegrate, sparks and ash.
Mike Boyle writes from Harrisburg,
PA. He says hello. Imagine him
waving.
bohobait.blogspot.com
The most essential gift for a
good writer is a built­in,
shock­proof, shit detector.
This is the writer's radar and all
great writers have had it.

Ernest Hemingway