Guy

Steve had been spending most of his time with his new girl, so we had not been hanging out much, but one Friday night, I went by his house. Things had changed a bit as his mother had a new boyfriend who was living there. His name was Guy. He was what you would call "slick," a salesman-type who shaved close and carefully combed back his graying hair, used lots of mouthwash and wore too much cologne. When you saw him in the daytime, he always had a big, bright-white, toothy perma-grin splattered across his face, but there was a danger in it, I thought. At night, he got drunk. Both of them did. But this fellow really couldn't hold his liquor very well and he would do awful things like pass out on the couch and then suddenly jump up to piss in the closet. One night after being out, Steve and I walked into the house to be greeted by a greasy, awful smell. Guy lay passed out on the couch in the living room, and he had shit himself badly. I'd been around drunks before, but I'd never seen anyone like this. He stayed on the couch in those shitty pants all night. In the morning, though, he showered and shaved and perfumed himself with great attention and when he emerged from the bathroom, he was just as he had been the day before. You could almost hear the sparkle in his teeth.

One day Guy went to jail. Steve never said why, but he was being held in what we all called the County Farm, and Steve's mother wanted us to go up and take him some things during visiting hours. I'd never been to a jail before, and I was scared. Driving up, we passed through a chain linked fence and big rolls of barbed wire. The prison itself was a low, green, cement structure in the middle of a big pasture. Many of the prisoners worked on road gangs to reduce the days they served. You would see them in their baggy tone on tone gray striped pants and shirts with big numbers stenciled across the back.  Sometimes they were joined together by ankle chains, sometimes not. They'd be in ditches along the roadside swinging scythes as they walked in unison, their eyes cast downward. We had always taken great delight in rolling down the car windows when I was a kid and singing "I've Been Working on the Chain Gang," whenever we drove by a group of them. Even now, I sometimes just laid on the horn. It looked just like a scene out of Cool Hand Luke.

We had to stand in line behind a group of other visitors as we slowly made our way to a table where a deputy was checking everybody in. When it was our turn, he asked us who we were there to see and what our relationship was to him. I was hoping he would tell me I couldn't come in, but I didn't have any luck there.  After he went through the bag of things that Steve had brought, he passed us through into a big cafeteria with long lines of tables, and we were told to sit on one side of the room against a wall. Then, after what seemed an eternity, a staunch, authoritative man in a uniform began calling names and one at a time, prisoners were led out.  After a few of them had been seated,  the names of visitors were called and  people were allowed to go over and join them.  It was all joyless.   I was sixteen and didn't belong here, I thought. My parents would have a fit if they knew I had come or even if they knew Steve's mother's boyfriend was in jail. All I wanted to do was get away, but there was no escape. Finally, Guy was finally led out and we were sent over to sit across from him at a a wooden table. He didn't look so bright. His hair was slicked back, but with water instead of grease, and he looked tired and worn in his county grays. He smiled at Steve and made some small talk in a low voice and Steve said a few things that meant nothing, and then we all shook hands and parted. I was awfully glad to be out.

After Guy got out of county, he came back to stay with Steve's mom, and a little while later, she was pregnant. It was incomprehensible to me. She had a daughter who was in her twenties and Steve was seventeen. His mother was big, bloated by bad food and liquor, and had frumpy bleached hair that most often looked like Phyllis Diller's.  And she just looked old. After Steve had gotten out of juvie, he had gone to live with her sister and her sister's husband for awhile, and you could see the difference. Steve's mother was a mess, but now at what looked like seventy years old she was pregnant. And Guy was happy.

After she had the baby, I went over to see them. Everyone was sitting around the dining room table when mom brought the baby  out swaddled in a pale blue blanket. There was much oooing and ahhhing and empty chatter, and feeling I, too, needed to proffer something, I said, "Let me see it." And like lightening, Guy's mood went black.

"Don't you say that," he spat as he quickly rose from his chair. I just looked at him. I didn't know what was wrong. Steve's sister said, "Oh, sit down, Guy, he didn't mean anything." But Guy was undeterred. "No," he said coming toward me, "No, Goddamnit, he can't say that about my baby." I had fallen down the rabbit hole, was still falling and hadn't reached the bottom, for everything was flimsy and spinning. I couldn't feel my legs.

"What did I say," I asked, looking around the room from face to face searching for a clue. Steve's mother stood there holding the baby in her fat arms saying nothing while Guy worked himself up good.  By now, the veins were beginning to stand out in his neck, his face contorted in an ugly mask of indignation and rage, white flecks of spit collecting at the corners of his mouth.

"Don't you call my baby 'it'!" he screamed, the sound emanating from some mysterious place deep in his chest. I simply stood looking at him. What was there to say? Stung with hideous embarrassment, humiliated, I couldn't find a way out. Then suddenly, he came at me like a man deranged, spilling chairs and table paraphernalia as he did. I jumped to the other side of the table unsure what to do. Jesus Christ, a grown man was trying to fight me! This was so far outside the realm of my experience that I could only think to run. I felt like a fool, but quickly I made the front door yanking it open in what seemed to me slow motion as I waited for some fatal blow to descend upon my head or neck. But then I was outside heading for my car where it was parked in the dark street already fumbling for the keys in my right pants pocket. As I fired the ignition, I looked toward the house, but there was no one in the doorway. Nobody had followed me out.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought as my heart pounded in my chest like a hammer or a fist, what the hell was wrong with that guy.

I didn't know where to go. I just drove around for awhile, thinking. The world was fucked up, I thought. But then I thought again. No, the world was not fucked up, mine was. There was another world out there, I knew. They hadn't just made it up for magazines and movies and T.V. shows. All that had to come from something. I would find it, I thought. I could not live my life like this. I would have to ready myself. I would have to keep looking.