by Jonathan Shaw.

SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA. 1971.

Friday night. With his parents out there in the living room, Ted sat before the television in his room in the back of the house. He’d been watching some old Humphrey Bogart movie called “San Quentin,” and playing with his gun for the last hour and a half.
Ted liked to watch those old black and white movies when there was nothing to do… Usually there was nothing to do. All his old friends were out dating pretty college girls or studying for finals or whatever… Ted could give a shit for any of that shit. He could have gone out but he didn’t really feel like going out. He’d already blown the last of his paycheck on some fat chick he met in a bar uptown….
That old bitch could drink! By the time they were done partying she’d put down damn near a whole fifth of bourbon all to herself… Not even counting what he’d bought her at the bar before his money ran out and she kept buying him beer till they went back to her motel room to keep going with her bottle.
Ted shivered a bit inside as he thought about her fat lips running over his face like slugs while he gave it to her… Ugggh… He cracked another beer and downed it in one go. He burped loudly and lit a cigarette.
The fat chick was the night before last and he was still recovering from it… Ted never really felt right if he didn’t get at least a day’s rest after a heavy night’s drinking like that…
Anyway there were a couple of good movies scheduled for the all nighter tonight…
Ted had never wanted to ‘get a college education’ or ‘make something of himself’ or any of that shit that some people do… So he just fucked off from job to job and blew his paychecks at the bars around town and lived there with his parents. Mostly, whenever he wasn’t out drinking, Ted really liked to sit at home and drink beer alone and watch the old movies on TV.
Friday nights were the worst. The bars were always packed with stupid bright eyed people who acted all drunk and retarded and always laughed way too loud. Ted usually just stayed home and watched tv and played with his gun on Friday nights.
Ted really liked his gun. He wasn’t all obsessive about it like some people are, but he was fond of it. It gave him a sense of power to just hold it and look at it sometimes. The feeling of the gun in his hands, the way the cold metal parts felt to his fingers…
He’d only shot it once… He’d taken it out in the backyard when his folks were away and blew a milk bottle all to shit. Minutes later the cops came around and warned him that it was against the law to fire a rifle within the city limits, and that if he ever did it again he’d get alot more than a warning… When they left, he put it up in his room and never took it out of the house again.
Anyway, since that episode he never felt the desire to fire it again. It was enough to just look at it, to know it was there. And whenever he held it now his mind always recalled its loud report, that hard jolt at his shoulder, the shattering fragments of glass… And a slight constriction of the stomach.
It was some big ass gun for a guy who didn’t do much shooting, who was even a little scared of its power… An old World War II British Enfield 303. It had bullets about the size of your index finger which could tear a hole the size of a baseball in a guy. The magazine held about ten of these; alot of potential for destruction.
Ted knew all this, and it frightened him a little.
Ever since he was a boy he was always a little scared of guns. But fascinated too… His mother always used to tell him how terrible guns were, how evil… Even when he played with a toy six shooter or cap pistol as a kid, he could always expect to hear the same old long-winded, boring lecture crap about it.
So when he brought home “that damned Tommy Gun” as she called it, the old lady had nearly shit. She told him to get that thing out of the house. He refused. And for the next couple of weeks both of his folks were in an uproar about it. His father had even threatened to kick him out. He’d been kicked out a few times before over the years, mostly for stuff he did when he drank too much, so it was really nothing new.
It had been pretty easy for Ted to sway his father’s worries about him having the gun by citing local burglaries and the growing crime rate and all that shit on the tv news… But his mother’s final words on the subject were that it was “a tool of the devil”…
Anyway, that had all been over a year ago. And once it all blew over it was never mentioned again and that was that. But his mother always seemed a little distant since then. Shit. He thought his mother was totally ridiculous for her fear of that gun. It’s not like he went out and bought it deliberately or anything anyway… It was given to him by a guy at work who owed him twenty-five bucks and couldn’t hang on to his paycheck further than the nearest titty bar or crap game… He was lucky to get anything out of the guy. He’d even thrown in a couple of boxes of ammo for it, which supposedly cost seven bucks a box… It had turned out to be a pretty good deal for twenty-five bucks.
When Ted first got the gun he would sit back in his chair and fantasize sometimes… A guy he knew back at school’s father had caught a nigger prowling in their back yard once. He’d held a shotgun to his head and made him lie down on his stomach while his wife called the cops. They even gave him a little cop plaque thing, some kind of citation for outstanding bravery or concern for public welfare or whatever… Ted used to look at his wall and picture a little cop plaque like that hanging there.
One night right after he got the gun Ted had a dream in which he shot Jeff Spencer… Nailed him good. Pumped him full of lead. He woke up in the morning feeling sick and oddly guilty… Jeff Spencer had been his best friend as a kid but he hadn’t seen him for over a year now… The last time he saw him, Jeff was walking down the street by the park holding hands with Ted’s old girlfriend, Jenny.
Ted and Jenny had gone together since the seventh grade and even talked about getting married… Jeff had been away working in a logging camp out west. He used to write to Ted all the time telling him how great it was out there in Northern California or wherever and trying to persuade him to come out and work there too. All that rugged adventure sounded pretty good to Ted. He was really tempted to just pack up a backpack and go out on the road there too. The only thing that kept him from going was Jenny… She was the only thing worth staying around for. So he’d stayed… When Jeff came back, Ted and Jenny were having another big fight and he hadn’t talked to her for a week.
Before Ted knew it was happening, Jeff was screwing Jenny and that was that… He never spoke to either of them again… He hated them both at first, especially Jeff. But soon enough his pain hardened into a kind of numb, beery indifference… That dream had really shook him up.
The Humphrey Bogart movie was over… Ted got up and went to the kitchen for another beer. He was down to his last one, so he went back in his room, put on his shoes and coat and picked up some change from the dresser. His parents were still out there watching tv in the living room… Lets Make a Deal. They watched that same stupid shit every night. Sometimes his parents really bugged the shit out of him. He hated that shit.

A cold wind was blowing when he opened the back door and stepped outside. A hard layer of snow covered the ground. It had been a really cold winter. Ted couldn’t wait till it was over. He really hated the winter, and sometimes he missed the feel of Jenny’s warm skin against him when the wind blew and hissed outside the frosted windows of his room. Especially when he was really drunk and feeling lonely… He sniffed and spat as he walked down the driveway. He wasn’t dressed warm enough but the store was just down the block… As he walked along the empty street he really looked forward to summer… He’d already decided he was going to pack up and hitchhike out to California in June and stay with some relatives. They said he would be welcome and he’d been thinking about it for a good little while now… He thought of palm trees and blond haired girls in the sun. Just like on tv…
Some kids hanging around the door of the pool hall nodded to Ted as he walked by. He nodded a silent greeting back without stopping. Shitheads… He walked up to the corner store.
The old clerk looked up and smiled as Ted opened the door. The store was warm. Ted walked over to the cooler, got a six pack of Rheingold and set it down on the counter.
“That be it, son?” the old clerk said.
“Gimme a pack of Winstons… Cold as shit out there, man!”
The old man grinned. “Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass brasierre, boy!” he said, punching the cash register efficiently.
“That’s gonna be a dollar eighty nine,” the old man said.
Ted counted out the change and put it on the counter. He picked up the brown bag and looked at the door, hesitating for a moment.
“Well, ‘night,” he said, pulling the door open.
“Night, son.”

Up next on Part Two: Somewhere in America, our protagonist Ted is growing increasingly aware of the trifectum of restless, irritable and discontent overwhelming his corpus. As his eyes and ears are invaded by fatty Midwestern game show matrons, see what can happen when decent people just SNAP!!

All this and more tomorrow!

(copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009)