Hillbilly Ennui in Three Movements
1. Furrowed
Upon release, Bug made his first stop at a diner three miles from the
jail. The prison officials had given him six dollars and Bug intended to spend
every cent on a decent meal. He ordered biscuits with sausage gravy, hamsteak,
three fried eggs, and coffee. When his food arrived and the various plates were
settled and steaming, the waitress offered him a newspaper. Bug took it and
read letters to the editor about all the boys being cut loose from up the pen.
When it came down, his wasn’t the heaviest case overturned. Bigger
guys, guys with multiple murders got turned loose. Jim Lubbock, the county
coroner, was caught tampering with evidence and further investigation revealed
that it hadn’t been his first time. If the cops told Lubbock they knew they had
the right man, Lubbock made sure the charges stuck. Bug’s case was one of many
that followed the initial reversals. Eventually, all of the coroner’s evidence
and opinions had to be dismissed and a tide of freed men washed onto the
streets.
Bug peered over the top of his paper to an adjacent booth, where a
large rural family was breakfasting while they waited to send their eldest son
off to college on the nine-thirty bus. The mother boohooed through the whole
affair, over waffles and coffee, and eventually outside by the curb. Bug
watched them through his reflection in the diner window, through glass streaked
by rain and fogged by breath, the family at the bus stop, all crowded together
under the little awning like a drizzly West Virginian manger scene. The bus arrived
and the woman’s shoulders heaved.
Kids love the summer, all kids do, but it had worn off for Bug sometime
in his early twenties. A season was noticed by little more than how its weather
dictated the heaviness of the jacket he wore to work at Timmons’ Esso. But
after prison, shit, after prison Bug would watch the sky with reverence. Bug
had spent the better part of a decade incarcerated and he found his life was
still governed by the code of the imprisoned. He liked to sit outside and watch
sunsets, to compare hues of sequential evenings and wonder at the variations,
but he would never admit it aloud. It would be a weakness, a vanity.
Jim Lubbock’s wife was part of an office pool that hit the lotto to the
tune of twenty-nine million, after taxes. Eleven people worked in the office,
eight who put in five dollars each, and three opting not to feed the kitty. So
when the numbers hit, there were eight millionaires and three office employees
who hadn’t thrown away five bucks. Three co-workers, forever bitching about how
they should have just gone for it, blaming stingy husbands or inventing slights
whereby the Eight had cheated them of the opportunity.
Back on the outside, Bug heard the phrase “Lubbock’s boys” fairly
often. When he found an efficiency apartment and was filling out the paperwork
for a background check, the landlord asked him, “So you’re one of Lubbock’s
boys, eh?” Bug replied that his father’s name was Dale Roach. “I guess you’re
right,” the landlord said. “Jim Lubbock’s got two boys of his own and they
turned out just fine.” The ladies at the Baptist church who served dinner on
Wednesdays and Sundays asked Bug if he was one of Lubbock’s boys and gave him
overcooked pasta and the latest news about Jesus Christ. When Bug applied for a
job at the Esso, old man Timmons kept his eyes on Bug’s hands, riddled with
tattoos made by machines improvised out of old tape players and blue ballpoint
pen ink, and asked what Bug intended to put under the section that asked if
he’d ever been convicted of a felony.
3. Aspiration
Jim Lubbock strode into the supermarket and made straight for the
canned goods. He was annoyed that his wife had sent him shopping hours before
the turkey was supposed to hit the table, but glad to be out of the houseful of
her relatives. Their ass-kissing oohs and aahs over Michelle’s meager culinary
talents were wearing him out, even ruining Lubbock’s enjoyment of his brother’s
displeasure at the change of holiday venue. Lubbock walked the length of aisle
four and turned back at the end, realizing his ruminations had marched him past
the gelatinous cranberry sauce he’d been sent after.
Bug saw him from the moment Lubbock paused to let the automated doors
slide open and admit him. From where he stood considering two bags of dried
stuffing, Bug watched the former county coroner walk purposefully to the center
of the store. Bug looked to the rafters and located three closed-circuit
cameras, then looked again to the mirrored offices on the second floor. He made
his way to aisle four and paused by a pyramid of tin cans of lentil soup.
Lubbock paced the aisle end to end, pinballing from pumpkin pie filling to
chili and back. Bug waited, felt his heart beat twice and fell into Lubbock’s
rhythm.
As Lubbock turned at the end of the aisle and began back, Bug paced in
from his end. When their paths overlapped in the center, Bug swayed in closer
to Lubbock and poked the former county official with his index finger, just
extended his digit and jabbed it between the fourth and fifth rib on Lubbock’s
left side. The older man cried out, first in surprise, next in reaction to
Bug’s expressionless face so close to his own.
Bug walked away, stooped to abandon his basket, and continued toward
the doors. Security guards were descending from the mirrored office. Lubbock
had his jacket off, searching his ample side for injury. “Stop him,” he
shouted. “I think, I think…” The first guard to reach Bug, a young man of
nineteen who had been a celebrated wide receiver only a year before, got an elbow
in the nose that fractured his vision. Bug broke into a full run and was
tackled by the rest, their batons rising and falling like derricks. The
automated doors sang bing bong bing bong, opening and closing as if to chew
him.
___________________________
Bio: Travis Dutchman
Travis Dutchman
earned his MFA in Fiction at the University of Pittsburgh and his BA in English
at West Virginia University. His work has been published in Short, Fast
& Deadly, Exclusive Magazine, the Kinder Anthology, and Space Squid. He currently resides
in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.