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"The Absolutely True

Story of Peter Allan Dunn"
©2009 Kelly Jameson

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christycall.com
 THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE
STORY OF PETER ALLAN DUNN
BY KELLY JAMESON
When I awoke, there were puke stains on the carpet. I sat
up. The room swayed. I needed a drink. Empty bottles
stacked in my sink. Got up. Slowly. Half a bottle of
Corona in the fridge. Finished it in two glugs, chucked it
in the sink with the rest. Looked in the mirror. Someone
shaved one side of my head while I was out. Maybe I'd
done it myself. I stared at my reflection. Wrinkled dark
blue T­shirt with food and beer stains on it. Hadn't shaved
my face for two days. If I'd still had all my hair, I'd have
said I looked menacing. “I look pretty menacing,” I said
anyway. I'd only been in a town a week. I needed different
friends. Friends who wouldn't shave my head when I
passed out.

Went into the bathroom, pissed, flushed the toilet,

splashed cold water on my face, combed the hair on the
left side of my head. Changed my shirt, jeans, and
underwear. Locked the door, headed to a small bar within
walking distance. It was hot and ten a.m. Got strange
looks.

The bar was warm, dark, and near­empty. I knew

the bartender wouldn't serve me before eleven so I sat on
a stool and waited. There was a strange clock on the wall
and a new painting of an old train. Or an old painting of a
new train. It was like a mausoleum, a cracker­jack shit­
house of by­gones and nothings—wasted stale moments
stacked up like cushions in the pressing air. Studied my
fingers. They seemed really long. Tapped on the
mahogany bar. The bartender put out a bowl of salted
peanuts. Ate some. But then I got thirsty and it was only
five past.

"You're right on time, Peter Allan Dunn."

I was startled out of my finger­gazing, peanut­eating

revelry by a large woman in a purple dress. She took up
the barstool next to me. It seemed to disappear up her ass
when she sat down. Couldn’t guess her age—could’ve been
forty or eighty­five.

"When did you get here? I didn't see you come in," I
said. “And how do you know my name?”

She grabbed the peanut bowl, opened her mouth,

dumped peanuts in. She crunched, spittle flew like little
daring trapeze artists without a net, peanut bits hung
from her lower lip. "Breakfasth of champions," she said.
She had a large purple boa wrapped around her thick
neck and her eyes were mountains, somehow. Snow­
topped. Her white stump arms wriggled when she moved
in the slightest, bringing to mind an avalanche.

Heard a loud noise, involuntarily jumped.

"'Scuse me," she said and giggled. "Peanuts give me

gas."

The bartender put a beer in front of her. She took a

long suck on the neck.

Looked at the bartender. He looked at me, then his

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watch. No beer.

The Purple Lady put her frozen­sausage fingers on

my hand. "I know lots of things, Peter. Are you a haunted
man? You look like a haunted man."

"Where'd you get that train painting?" I asked the

bartender.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"It's cool," I said.

"eBay. Supposed to be haunted." He went back to

carelessly washing out beer glasses, water splashing
everywhere, glopping on the floor at his feet.

"What do you want from life?" Purple Lady asked

me.

Looked at her, then at the bartender. "A beer." He

set one before me even though it was only 10:13. Time
seemed to slow.

"Thanks." Was about to take a sip when her ice­cold

hand came down on my arm. "What do you want out of
life?"

"Right now? Some good music, maybe Meatloaf’s

Paradise by the Dashboard Light, a few beers, a good hard
fuck. To survive the next few hours, sleep it off tomorrow,
and do it all again the next day."

"Your life could be different." She removed her hand

from my arm and I slugged down more beer. Belched. "I
used to believe that. Now I'm a big believer in nothing."
Looked at the painting again. "Wish I had that painting."

"Be careful what you wish for," Purple Lady said.

"You can't have that painting until you want your life to
be different."

"Listen lady, I'm in serious idiot mode here and

you're fucking that up."

Purple Lady hissed and it sounded like a tribe of

snakes with PMS.

"Shit! Leave me alone!"

"You don't even know you're in mourning for her

and have been for several lifetimes."

"What?" Just then something about the painting

caught my eye. Stared at it. Thought I saw a little old man
in blue overalls riding a squeaky bike next to railroad
tracks. He looked at me. He didn't smile. A chill raced up
my spine.

"Did you see that?" I asked Purple Lady, grabbing

her sleeve. "Did you see that?"

"Yes," she said. "Can I have an amaretto sour?" The

bartender got her one. "That's the father of the woman
you loved in several lifetimes. He killed you once, a long
time ago. With an axe. Split your skull right down the
middle."

"You're insane."
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"I get that a lot," she said. "But see, this painting, it's
a gift. It only reveals itself to people who are in mourning
and don't know why."

"I'm not a mourning person. I prefer the night."

Purple Lady laughed. "The painting says otherwise.

You've lived before and you've carried your grief through
several lifetimes. Look again at the train. There are no
tracks. It follows the route where the tracks once were,
and even though the train's lights are all burning bright,
no one's inside. That's because the route's different each
time.

“I mean, sugar, don’t you ever wonder why you have

those splitting headaches? It’s because you took an axe to
the skull in another life and haven’t gotten over it yet.”

“Gotten over it? Jesus, how does someone get over

something like that?”

Purple Lady sighed, stood, and waddled over to the

clock. That's when I noticed the numbers on the clock
weren't traditional; they were years.

"Now, when was World War I? Wish I’d studied

more in history class," she said.

"I used to be obsessed about it," I said, surprising

myself. "There are no quick answers to the cause of the
First War. It raged from 1914 to 1918."

Purple Lady arched an eyebrow. It looked like a

caterpillar on acid. "There are no quick answers to lots of
things. But we still want them, don’t we? Wars are
primarily about fighting, revenge, killing, but it would be
a great oversimplification to state that that’s all they’re
about," she said.

"Sometimes wars are about falling in love," I said.

Then I wondered why I’d said that. I said, "I wonder why I
said that."

"Because you were there. World War I. France.”

"Why do I suddenly feel like I have to take a shit?" I

said.

Purple Lady wound the arms of the clock; it

sounded like bones twisting and snapping. I got sucked
into the painting. For a moment, I was looking out of it at
the bar. Then the bar vanished and I was squatting on a
battlefield, taking a shit. Helmet, trousers pulled down to
ankles, boots, a major's overcoat. Explosions all around, a
crumbling barn in the distance. I'd worked my way
around a barbed wire fence in a field and I was bleeding.
The air smelled of rust, blood, shit, and deep despair. The
bite of gray horse flies was unbearable. Wondered what I
was doing so far from my men, then took some shrapnel
in the ass. Woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by other
wounded soldiers. A pretty nurse spoke French to me. It’s
the year 1918. Summer. Want to tell her how beautiful
she is. Instead, I throw up. Then I sleep.

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“I remember it being so quiet,” I said to the gorgeous
French nurse. “How is that possible?” It was well after
midnight and I was burning up with fever, unable to sleep.
The others were either sleeping, sedated, or not listening.
She placed a wet cloth on my forehead. “I remember
joining what was left of another batallion. I listened to a
Major retell their attack against dug­in Germans.” At the
word “Germans” her lovely hand stilled. She pushed the
hair out of my eyes. “Shells whistled overhead; branches
snapped, showering us with leaves and wood chips. We
wriggled forward on our bellies, forced to move like that
through thickets so dense that two men could pass within
three feet and not know it.”

Looked into her wide violet­blue eyes. “Honey, did

you know that math is the only language that everyone
knows?” By candlelight I studied how her small breasts
strained against the fabric of her white uniform. Imagined
my mouth on her nipple. Parting her legs. Ramming myself
into that warmth. “We crawled until we were close
enough to charge machine guns. I was so bent on revenge
I didn’t even realize I wasn't crawling anymore; I was
running, tripping over logs and underbrush, screaming,
intent on bayoneting a German until someone yelled ‘Just
shoot him! Shoot him!’ I dropped to one knee and put a
bullet in his back. Then I wandered around, took a shit,
and woke up with shrapnel in my ass.”

The nurse murmured something in French,

smoothed the hair off my forehead again. Her voice, so
soft, made me hard. Lay on my side. Couldn’t hide the
evidence. Thought of casualty counts to distract myself.

“Fumée?” she asked, offering a cigarette.

 Took it. She lit it. Inhaled and exhaled, watching the
smoke swirl spectral in the candlelight. “I’ve seen men go
crazy. Raving or just glassy­eyed and expressionless.
Splintered and cracked like tree trunks. If you’ve never
heard wood moan, it’s not pleasant.”

The night was quiet. Felt so hot. My head ached.

Didn’t realize I’d been crying until she wiped my face with
another cool cloth. “Where are my men?” I croaked. “My
men, they didn’t have adequate trench mortars or hand
grenades.” My hands shook. Moonlight sank heavily
through the large dirty windows.

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 kelly
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For several weeks, two shiny twin­six Packards had been
coming to get a few of the more mobile men. The
Packards rolled away in the morning and returned at 8
pm, the men all smiles, their war­torn bodies well stocked
in cigarettes, cigars, loaves of bread.

Stared out the window. The nurse followed my eyes.

“Where are my men? Where are they?” I sobbed. She put
her hand on mine. “In the beginning none of us knew how
to fight. We hardly had any ammunition. Every time one
of us died, we fell silent and waited for our turn, sure
we’d be next.”

Stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on a table

beside my bed. It was wet.
My French progressed slowly. Learned some basic words.
The nurse taught me. Her name was Amelie. Something
about her long, shiny, curly black hair made me think of
cathedrals and tapestries depicting Mary Magdalene
bathing Christ’s feet as a cat jumped from one oil
container to another chased by a dog ridden by a child.
Mosaics of Jupiter carrying off Europa. Orpheus charming
the animals. The vivid and changing color of her eyes,
their aliveness, brought van Gogh to mind, wandering
along a riverbank wearing candles on his hat.

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The last couple of days had been rainy. The Packards
came. For me this time, plus Benny and John Paul, two
others who've convalesced well. Didn’t want to go but I
was low on cigarettes. And Amelie wasn’t at the hospital.

The mansion was fifteen miles outside the hospital,

sitting on sweeping lawns. It had once been a gaudy piece
of outfoxing. A big, rambling affair once inhabited by
many servants and now falling into and onto itself with
neglect. Was surprised to see other American soldiers
fooling around on the lawns, wrestling, trying to find their
centers again. Looked hard but didn’t see any of my men.
Felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

The surrounding gardens were a ruin. But the smells

inside were delicious. Found myself eating heartily at a
long, stone table with Benny and John Paul. “Beats being a
German prisoner, huh?” Benny said. And then a warm
hand was at my back, on my shoulder. “Are you a truffle­
lover?” the distinctively female voice said. Stopped
chewing. Laughed. Don’t know why. ‘Truffle lover’ seemed
funny to me. Benny and John Paul were drooling. “Don’t
turn around,” she commanded. “Eat. Laugh. Enjoy
yourselves.” So I ate. The room was large; its beautifully
carved décor of fruits and figures were pointless. The
matron came into view: older, hard­looking, in a filmy
negligee and not much else; large breasts resting on her
chest, sagging toward strong legs; tired shadows under
dusty, brown eyes in an attractive face; hair dyed horribly
blonde. She introduced herself as Madame Babeth. More
absence than presence. That was it. Like her home, more
imposing than beautiful. Too heavy for grace but haughty
as hell, did she do that well? Did she ever. I’d met Majors
less haughty. That’s saying something. A woman with
wine barrels named after cows, names like Jolie and
Violette. “Come boys, have some champagne, won’t you
darlings?” She spoke English and her French accent wasn’t
unpleasant. But she was nothing like Amelie. Benny had
his fork mid­way to his mouth when she reached down
and squeezed his crotch. With her other hand, she rubbed
John Paul’s. She looked at me. “I think I will take zees two
first. You, however, will be a better match for me. More
time and care with you, I think.” Then she disappeared
upstairs with Benny and John Paul, their food half
finished. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. She said once, “If I
ever see za Kaiser, I’ll shoot him in zee balls.”

There were cigarettes on the table. Took some and

walked around the grounds until I found a secluded spot
in the ruined garden, stood in the shadow of one of the
massive stone walls of the mansion. Clipped yew,
fountains, and statuary, chipped now, but once it must’ve
all been impressive. I reveled in a good smoke, a full belly,
the lingering taste of champagne on my tongue. The sky
was too bright. Leaned, one foot against the wall, smoked
some more. Heard the moans of hard sex coming from
Madame’s bedroom windows, open to the warm, sultry
air. There is a beauty in things hurting. But I didn’t want
to think of her shivering white flesh. I knew she got off on
hearing about injuries. A fractured skull, two broken legs,
a smashed arm, a multiple­fractured jaw, a scorched foot,
a burned hand. She asked the men to describe it in detail
for her until she came.

Was stubbing out my cigarette, lighting another

when I saw a petite woman emerge from a small building
and begin to beat the dust from a rug. Amelie. She
stopped what she was doing when she saw me.
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What was she doing here? She left the rug and came
to stand beside me. “I’m surprised to see you here,
Amelie.”

“Vous avez besoin d'un se rase.”

Something about a shave. She took my hand and I

followed her into what appeared to be servant’s quarters,
a long narrow room mostly bare except for some chairs.
She dragged one of the hard wooden chairs to the middle,
filled a bucket with water, soaped my face. I closed my
eyes. The splash of water, the careful movements of her
hands as she shaved the beard from my jaw. Her breath
was sweet. She was sloppy. Water splashed on her white
sundress, molding it against her erect nipples, which
brushed my arm. For some reason, an odd memory arose.
My father and I sitting in an ornate church, I engrossed
with the sharp, jutting carved figures on the tympanum
above the main door of a portal, their faces so alive with
expression and movement, representing the Last
Judgment. The naked bodies with snakes’ tails and winged
bottoms and faces appearing from below the waist. The
service of sinful appetites, a cauldron filling with merry
souls. In that moment with my broken body and my
broken heart, I reached for her. My arms went around her
and I buried my face in her chest. She put aside the blade
she’d been shaving me with, her arms cradled my neck,
her fingers threaded my hair.

“Amelie,” I murmured. “Last night I dreamed of a

French field. Shooting, shooting, the shooting. In the air,
on the ground. Carbines, machine guns. The bang­bang of
guns. All I want is to plant one or two Germans before I
get shot down. Plant those fuckers where they belong. In
the ground.”

Started to shake and she placed her fingertips to my

lips. “Shhhhhs.” Then she lifted her sundress over her head
and discarded it on the stone floor. She took my hand and
placed it on her breast. Sweet sweat. The fantasies I’d had
every night in the hospital flooded my brain. She stood
and then my trousers were at my ankles. She stared at me
and murmured something before taking me inside her.

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The next time I came to the mansion Amelie took me
some distance to a shelled home in a cluster of beech
trees. Rooms opened up intimately on each other.
Touching yet barely touching. Beds unmade, dishes
shining on the dining table, others cracked and broken,
on the floor, curtains blowing gently in dust, the smell of
abandonment still in the air. Cautiously we climbed the
stairs to the second floor. I looked over the books in the
library. Wasn’t impressed. A shutter creaked. Jumped.
Outside the broken window, mutilated tree trunks.
Limbless, pointing upward, downward, every which way,
as if they too were lost. If I tried hard, I could smell the
home­life smells underneath the dust and smoke smells.
The careful labor of chafed, loving hands used to labor.
Someone had carted off stones from the house, no doubt
thinking to rebuild the mangled road. The stones and the
road were gone.

After we’d made love several times, we sat beneath

the trees eating cheese and bread, drinking champagne
that Amelie had pilfered from the main house. “All I ever
learned about love was how to shoot someone,” I said.

“Vous êtes un bel homme et je vous aime.”

Understood then that she loved me. Took my knife and
carved both our initials in the tree, the date, and the state
where I’d lived most of my life, Maine. I carved deeply,
imagining how the trees would grow, how the graffiti
would swell and twist and contort with the memories
we’d created here. Wanted it to last forever.
When Madame Babeth summoned me to her bedroom, I
didn’t go. I’d eaten her food, smoked her tobacco, drunk
her champagne. Laughed at her truffles. For a while, she
still sent for me in the Packard, assuming I was playing
hard to get. When I refused her advances for the last time,
standing outside on the front walk before her once grand
mansion, flanked by crumbling nudes, rain falling, I felt
the grass and trees watching me. And then, in her fleecy
French voice that didn’t match her face, “You will regret
zis, Peter Allan Dunn.”

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Didn’t go back to the mansion again. Was going to ask
Amelie to marry me but didn’t see her for days. Started to
get really worried when she finally appeared at the end of
the week, avoiding my eyes. There were dark bruises on
her arms and beneath one eye. “Who did this to you?”
The words barked up and out from my spine, startling
her. It was her eyes, glassy and unemotional as the
soldiers in the field, that worried me.

Took her hand in mine. And more softly, “Amelie,

who did this to you?”

“Mon père.”

“Your father!”

She nodded. “Madame Babeth...”

“Oh God. Because of me. Madame Babeth told your

father about us and he beat you?” Took her in my arms.
Finally was forced to let her go so she could work. When
she returned to my bedside I told her, “Listen Amelie,
marry me. Marry me!” I would be released from the
hospital soon and then what?

“Je ne peux pas vous épouser. Mon père vous tuera.”

Killing. That I understood. Her father wanted to kill

me. I laughed. She didn't.
On the day I was released, I went to find her father, to
explain how much I loved his daughter, that I'd never
harm her, that I would care for her, cherish her the rest of
my life. Found him in the old barn, the one I’d seen in the
distance when I’d been shot in the ass. Full circle.

I’d thought to find an old man. Was surprised by his

strength and hatred, the way spittle flecks flew from his
mouth as he raised an axe and split my skull in two.
Didn’t see it coming. Had no time to react. In the
darkness, I called for Amelie. And then I was sucked back
through the painting.

“Do you see your life differently now?” Purple Lady

asked. Watched, open­mouthed as she saddled out of the
bar. Looked at what I’d been drinking, pushed it away.
Ran home to my apartment. Was different now, for fuck’s
sake. Got a haircut. Avoided creepy old men in overalls
who rode squeaky bicycles. Had a new purpose. To find
Amelie in this lifetime. Let go of that helpless feeling that
death and doom awaited around every corner. Stopped
seeing glimpses in the ghostly black­and­blue night of
pale faces, turned up in the darkness, an arm, a leg, a foot,
air that smelled like rust and blood and shit and deep
despair. Didn’t have any more headaches after that either.
When I went back to the bar to inquire about the
painting, it was gone. The barkeep claimed there’d never
been such a painting.

21
Kelly Jameson is the author of the
indie novel Dead On, which was
film-optioned and a runner-up at
the 2006 DIY Los Angeles Book
Festival.
deadonnovel.com
The proper function of man is
to live, not to exist. I shall not
waste my days in trying to
prolong them. I shall use my
time.
­Jack London

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