old gold revisited

The year is 1988. There is an argument about homemade fireworks the night Tommy leaves the farmhouse for the last time. Corliss, Tommy’s grandpa, grapples with him by the red front door and The Woman stands at the bay window in the next room. In wonder, she watches a fox slink along the edge of the cornfield, noting its every move. Motion sensors detect the critter and light him up with porch light. The fox freezes as Corliss’ knuckles go white. His forearms are imposing and cutting off Tommy’s circulation in his arm. Corliss mentions South Dakota burn bans and house rules. It’s funny, he thinks but can’t say. You were supposed to be charity. He lets go, and Tommy is out the door and jumps in a Jeep belonging to The Friend, who is half a year younger and goes to the same high school. Normally, Corliss and The Woman love having The Friend over because he's a good kid that doesn't reinforce harmful behavior or things punishable in a court of law. But two days before the exchange with Corliss and Tommy by the red door, The Friend stopped by the farmhouse with firework paraphernalia and said, he flat-out lied, that the fireworks were dead. "Soaked in the rain, they were."

The Woman looks from the fox and to The Friend in the Jeep. He peels on the plastic steering wheel cover and chews on the right side of his cracked lips. He keeps his eyes away from the red door.

“Corliss, you’re making an enemy out of your grandson,” The Woman says, eyes now trained back from the Jeep and resting somewhere inside the impressive dark. In a rolling haze of dust illuminated by the porch light, the Jeep disappears. Once, twice, the little fox sniffs and hops off, splitting the corn stalks with long bounds.

“Don’t,” Corliss says, panting. He looks at The Woman and she looks back. They exchange something without words but it stings each of them, slightly, to Corliss perhaps more than The Woman. “He’s our son. He’s making an enemy out of his father.”

The house goes quiet until bedtime when Corliss tries to play the stiff guitar he bought on a Summer day, the same weekend he and The Woman inherited the farmhouse, many, many years before.

Very early the following morning, Corliss and The Woman get a call that Tommy is dead, shot five times in the abdomen and thigh. The cop on the phone said that The Friend notified the local PD that there was a shooting in the parking lot of a diner outside of town. The two friends went for cheeseburgers but started a fight when Tommy lit a firework underneath someone’s truck. Cops decided that two men “did Tommy in” with two different guns and two different types of bullets. They fled in a pickup. There was one witness besides The Friend and he was drunk. He was also driving a pickup.

Corliss feels a new kind of madness, a weird fit, crawl under his skin when he hangs up the phone and tells The Woman. Somewhere inside the farmhouse, a door slams.

Corliss wakes in a sweat on the morning of the funeral. He sits up, feeling weightlessness on the other half of the waterbed, and he knows that The Woman is awake and making coffee. Gone, he thinks. Dangling from a wire hanger on the closet door across from him is a black suit, black tie and pressed, white shirt that he bought the day before. His bones don’t hurt as much as they should today. Earn your hurt. He rubs his eyes and listens to himself inhale and exhale for a few moments.

In the dining room The Woman stands with droopy shoulders in front of a bay window looking out over a corn field. The sun isn’t completely up. Her hands are behind her back and she isn’t holding a coffee cup. Strange, Corliss thinks. He walks by her without touching her waist. They get dressed after eating oatmeal with raisins and they keep their voices down.

The service for Tommy passes in a flash. Not many people attend. Not even The Parents. They are at two opposite ends of Eurasia, one practicing dental hygiene and one practicing abusive relationships. But The Friend is there, standing opposite Corliss and The Woman. He is the first to leave the funeral. In little time, the rest in attendance follow his lead.

Corliss and The Woman now stand alone next to Tommy’s casket underground.

“He would’ve hated this,” The Woman says, looking at the clear sky above her. Tractors reverberate on the green horizon.

Uselessly, Corliss reaches for The Woman’s hand but she retracts. Once again, they go behind her back.

“No,” he replies. “I think you’re wrong.” Corliss removes Old Gold from his pocket and puts one of the cigarettes in his mouth. He touches his pockets searching for a lighter and doesn’t find one. In these moments he feels unlike himself. “Alright,” he says, and exhales. A tap later and the cigarette slides back into the pack. Old Gold goes in his pocket to rest for a while.

Corliss and The Woman leave. She gets into the car first without letting Corliss open the door for her. Before he can get in, The Friend stops him. “Wait!” he yells. He grabs the old man’s shoulder.

“Hey… I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For my part,” he says, looking into the car at The Woman, who is staring back.

“Not your fault,” Corliss replies. “I’m leaving now.”

The Friend stops him and quickly says “I think I know where they live.” Corliss peers at The Friend. “We’ll find them.”

“We?”

The Friend clears his throat. “Someone will. I’ll try.”

“Don’t get your hands dirty.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay.” Corliss stops and waits a moment. “Tell me when you do.”

Finally, he gets in the car once The Friend walks off. “What did he say?” asks The Woman. The car ignites at a quick turn of the key.

“He said he’s sorry,” Corliss replies.

They drive home and two weeks later The Woman files for divorce. 38 years of marriage. Two weeks after that, The Woman dies in a car crash driving north with one suitcase and a cardboard box of their wedding china. EMTs find her thirty feet from the hewn car with shards of pewter around her. She wanted Corliss to hold on to the rest of the old things. “You deserve them,” she had said.

The old man stays in Wells, South Dakota, in the two-story farmhouse that he lived in with The Woman and Tommy until they both died. Corliss is generally unhappy and feels violent most days.

The year is 1991. Farming keeps Corliss occupied but he has trouble focusing. With some grumbling, he leases out half of his acreage.

In early September, he runs into Tommy’s old friend, now a police officer, while walking through downtown Wells. The Cop asks Corliss to coffee. They make small talk and sip water and The Cop hands him a folded grey napkin with an address on it. “Not in my jurisdiction,” he says. He leaves Corliss his private phone number. You and me, Corliss thinks. We.

The next day, Corliss visits the pound. He needs something big, like a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd. Instead, he gets a poodle and names her Lemon. She’s the only one that seemed standoffish enough for the old man. Big Spirit. In time, she brightens things and makes Corliss laugh. He teaches her to play dead when he holds up a finger like a gun and yells “Bang!”

Later that year, Corliss leases out the rest of his land and begins to send death threats to the address that The Cop gave him. He also writes poetry and memorizes the book of Revelations.

The year is 1993. The Cop drives down main street, through downtown Wells with his new partner. Four miles outside of the last barbershop on the right, they drift by an old house preceded by a lengthy, gravel driveway. They are surrounded by corn fields. One double take and the car stops at request of the new cop. Dust settles.

“Do you see that?” the new cop asks. She is anxious and reaches for the radio.

“Yes.” The Cop, Tommy’s old friend, doesn’t need to look. He holds up his hand.

“He has a gun.”

“He always has a gun.”

“Should we talk to him?”

“No.”

“Should we call it in?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He’s quiet and doesn’t cause problems for us. You probably missed that at orientation. He’s just there. And he’s on his own property. He can hold a gun if he wants.”

The new cop pauses and continues to stare down the driveway. “He looks like the type of quiet that might be dangerous.”

“He isn’t.”

“Let’s talk to him.”

The Cop doesn’t reply right away. He looks down the driveway, too. An old man sits on a plastic chair with a shotgun laid across his lap. A dog sleeps next to him. “What was that phrase you used to describe your reappointment to Wells?”

“‘Aggressive replacement,’” the new cop replies. She readjusts her collar.

“That’s right, I remember. I suggest you aggressively drop this.”

The cops drive on and stop a Honda Accord just outside of town for going four over the speed limit because the new cop fervently insists.

The year is 1998. Corliss has moved clutter from the farmhouse to the detached garage. He sets up a cot in the living room and reads the daily news three times before bed. In the corner is a heap of picture frames under a sheet. He throws out his old guitar because the strings have rusted straight through.

He eats at the living room piano bench and burns his books when Winter starts. He doesn’t shave. Lemon gets a brushing every day. She nudges Corliss with her nose when his heartbeat increases in his sleep. When he is awake, Corliss finds that the memory of Tommy and The Woman are made of only color, and they exist independently from one another. Corliss wishes that isn’t so, but not consciously. He tries to remember the times they were together. Time has made him old.

Late December, Corliss receives a letter of expletives in response to the most recent package he sent. Rotten meat was too much? Corliss thinks. The letter they send isn’t long, and the P.S. is a specific date after the New Year, scribbled in pen. One date with a time: 5:30pm. BYOB.

Corliss calls The Cop and tells him the date.

“Don’t come knocking,” Corliss says.

“Please, I don’t want to know. Good luck,” replies The Cop.

The year is 1999. It is early January and Corliss is picking up dry-cleaning in town. He sits waiting in a white chair in the parlor. The Young Woman at the desk is leaning forward, eyeballing him. His face has lines all over it, starting somewhere underneath the eyes in a hidden place. He is freshly shaven with a few bloody cuts on his chin and cheek. Shaky hands, he has. His hair is matted and short.

“Things alright, Corliss?”

“Things are okay. You?”

She nods. “It’ll just be a few minutes. Read a magazine.”

He doesn’t. Twenty minutes later she rings a bell at the counter and hands Corliss a heavy hanger draped in plastic with a black suit inside of it. Before he leaves, The Young Woman stops him and hands him Old Gold.

“Found it in the pocket,” she says.

Tut tut, he thinks. How did I forget? The Cashier squints at him as the door closes.

He walks outside and down the sidewalk on main street, hauling The Black Suit on his shoulder. It is Winter and becoming bitter cold. He passes a man and woman holding the hands of a little boy, fogging up the window of a German chocolate shop with warm breath. The Young Family notices Corliss and steps inside when he reaches them. Must have gotten cold all of a sudden, Corliss thinks.

He stops at the tobacco store. Inside, The Cashier looks nervous. “Hi, Corliss. Can I help you?” He is tapping the finger of his right hand against the cash tray.

“Have I met you before?” Corliss asks. He tilts his head backward and diagonally.

“Uh, I don’t know. Can I help you?”

“Yeah, but how do you know me?”

“Everyone knows you around here. Sorry. Can I help you?”

“Can I have a lighter?”

“$0.70 for a mini, $1.00 for a jumbo.”

“Jumbo.”

“What color?”

Corliss thinks. “Blue.” He slaps $1.00 in change on the counter and leaves with The Blue Lighter. The Cashier’s heart rate drops.

Corliss begins to walk home as the sun bows. He keeps Old Gold in the pocket of the black suit. He passes a cop car parked in a Rite Aid lot, nodding at the silhouettes inside. A veterinary shop. A funeral home. The last barber shop on the right.

Just a quarter of a mile from his driveway, Corliss notices a truck with bright headlights in the distance slowly approaching. Unnatural, Corliss thinks. He stops for a moment and then begins to run as fast as his old legs will take him. They creak and pop. Skeletal, he thinks. He looks at his watch: 4:30pm. They’re early.

Corliss is slumped over in his kitchen holding on to that shotgun of his. He wheezes and sits up, using his elbows. His chest and shoulders are sticky and the linoleum floor that The Woman picked out three decades earlier is officially ruined with red stuff and bullet holes. Across from Corliss on the floor is a middle-aged man and he is dead. He is also in the kitchen. A pistol is next to him on the ground. Footsteps in the hallway get louder.

Hurriedly, Corliss fumbles over the shotgun and the extra shells he stored in his pocket. So slippery, he thinks. He whistles very, very loudly, like a call. Fear is taking hold. The footsteps quicken. They are heavy. Corliss lunges for the pistol next to The Kitchen Man in a last dash and is suddenly shot in the leg from The Hallway Man. Before another round is loosed, The Hallway Man yells and drops to his knees. A Poodle named Lemon lets go of the calf muscle and retreats into the living room. Watch for the Poodle. Corliss has the pistol now and he turns over covered in red and shoots straight – more than once. The Hallway Man falls over backwards and hits his head on the ground. He is dead.

After fifteen minutes of disquieting rest and heaving, Corliss stands. The Poodle stares from the living room because Corliss doesn’t let her come into the red-painted kitchen. “Stay,” he shouts at Lemon. He holds up his bloody palms. Please, stay. He has earned this. He revels.

Corliss stumbles upstairs to his old bedroom that he used to share with The Woman and tends to his wounds. Two uses for vodka, he thinks. He pulls a dusty bottle from the bedside table. Lemon stays in the living room, and her ears go back when she hears screams from the upstairs bathroom as Corliss swigs and pours. In between, he scans the room that he hasn’t stepped into in years. The walls are blank.

Corliss showers and bandages his wounds. He puts new clothes on and throws the wet, black suit pierced by bullet holes on top of the hamper after removing Old Gold from its breast pocket. He finds a lighter. The Blue Lighter. His hands are shaking. Almost immediately after lighting up, he is sent into a coughing spell. He spits out the cigarette. “Okay,” he says. Too long, he thinks.

For a moment Corliss ponders something. Then he strikes The Blue Lighter again and holds it underneath the bedroom curtain. The curtain fizzles and blackens a bit at the edge like burnt plastic. He goes to the bathroom and trips on the water and blood. Once he is up, he grabs the bottle of vodka and sprinkles it all over the curtain and bed and throws it against the wall opposite him. Three uses for vodka. He smiles and ignites the bedroom curtains and the bedroom sheets with the lighter. They go up fast. He throws the struck lighter into his closet. Lasted pretty long, he keeps thinking. You think you can hold me? Quickly, he pulls the black clothes from the top of the hamper and arranges them on the waterbed in the shape of a dead man, dodging the flames with his hand.

He grabs the bag he packed in case of survival, along with a puffy coat and Lemon. Good girl. With long steps, Corliss strides past two lifeless bodies and pools of blood. Without looking back into the old farmhouse, Corliss kicks through the back door, shredding the frame where the lock was.

A cough and he is out in the dusk; the backyard is dreadfully cold. Corliss turns his head upward and pulls a fuzzy hat over his head, a pink one that belonged to The Woman, down to his low brow. The bedroom burns. The orange in front of the blue looked like a painting he had seen in a museum. Tommy’s basement room will burn last, he thinks.

Corliss tucks Lemon into his puffy jacket and zips it up, leaving her white head exposed. He can see her breath in the biting South Dakota air. With a nudge of her nose, Lemon looks up and licks the old man up on his chin. “Let’s go,” Corliss says out loud. He turns and feels like running, but he know he can’t. So he walks. He walks into the dead cornfield behind the farmhouse as sirens scream from Wells. He thinks about The Cop. Forgive me for the mess. An old man has died, along with a Kitchen Man, a Hallway Man, and an empty mausoleum.

Corliss trembles, wondering if the fit has left him. He walks through the brittle corn stalks like knives and north into places less wild than these.

Four days later a funeral is held for the old man and an empty casket is buried next to a kid named Tommy. For some reason, the entire town shows up.

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