Everybody
Dies ---------------->
Marvin
Maybe he should have
had said something to keep her. He had tried so hard. Pressure from every side. What had gone wrong? All he wanted was a little peace,
a woman he could love, a decent job, and a small house under a quiet shade tree.
Too much to ask, maybe.
She had left him. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Lately there had been too many fights, night after
night of screaming. After a particularly hard day at work, with the
foreman riding him hard like he always did toward the end of the week,
he came home to find the house trashed, she still in her robe. It didn't look like she had been out of bed for five minutes.
All he had said was "shit, look at this place," half under his breath....She started screaming "this is what we got from that lousy paycheck
you bring home every week blah, blah...cooped up in this rat-hole all day...blah, blah, blah, if you were half a
man....blah, blah.. till he just could not stand it anymore.
He went to the gun cabinet and got out his baby, his
.357. He got a cold one from the fridge, and went back out behind the barn,
to his special shooting range. He was like some damned cowboy
from a Roy Rogers rerun, standing there blasting cans and bottles - "recycling" he liked to joke.
She came swirling out of the house in her best dress, red high heels getting dusty
from the driveway that he had sworn to her he would turn into a proper yard, someday, but had just never gotten around to, "cause honey, you know how hard I'm working"....
She yanked the old cloth suitcase into the back seat of the old Impala, got in, cranked it
up and tore down the driveway in a swirl of dust. He walked out to the driveway and watched
the taillights recede. For one crazy second standing there with his mouth open, he toyed with
the idea of opening up on her. Man, just one of these soft nose,
.185 grain slugs
would hit that gas tank and blewey! Blow her fucking ass all over the road. They wouldn't even
find the slug, it would fragment and bury itself deep into the twisted wreckage.
But, hell, at this
distance it would take a lucky shot anyway and who cared. Let the bitch go. "Good riddance to bad rubbish,"
his momma used to say.
He walked on in the house and got the bottle of Jack Daniels out of the cupboard. Seemed like the best
time for the hard stuff...
June
She sped down the road, hardly seeing it from the tears that streamed down her face. All that mascara that she had just put on, wasted. She got about a mile out, then pulled off on a little side road next to the river. She half expected him to chase her, run her down with that big monstrosity he called a pickup. Who knew what he would do. He had been acting so crazy lately, drinking all the time.
At first it was a new adventure. He would come home, she would have something pretty on, a little perfume, some soft country music playing in the background. Dinner would be all laid out nice and neat on the table. He would sweep her up in his arms and twirl her around the living room till she could hardly catch her breath and her body thrilled to his touch.
What had happened? Nowadays he came home surly, sullen, didn't want to talk. He would just go to the fridge, get a beer. It seemed like he had stopped caring about her.... hell, about her, his job, the place, anything.
She remembered the first night. He could dance so fine.....After the dance, they drove out along the river
road, andstopped under a big stand of willows. Grabbing a blanket, he had led her by the hand right down near the water.
Lying next him with her head on his chest, listening to his heart beat and his breath, so slow,
flow in and out of his lungs, was the closest to heaven she had ever been. The moon falling on his upturned profile, his strong hands tenderly stroking her face and back, the gentle rush of the
water, she had fallen in love right there. It was hopeless, she was gone.
The whirlwind romance, engagement and subsequent marriage had blurred by. At first it was a thrill, every new revelation made her breathless. There were times she thought her heart would burst out of its prison of flesh and go rocketing into space with the power of her feelings driving it like some hell-hound. "Now those things were just a smear on the window of her memories," she thought to herself. "Oh, great. Now I am writing lines for some maudlin romance novel," she half laughed to herself through the tears. "Well fuck him," she said, loudly. "I'm out of here."
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