Five Portraits of Beauty from Five
Southern Men
Author: Travis Vick
Bill
“I put him on the grass, as beads of
water were rolling from his face to the ground. I was quiet.
It was quiet.
Everywhere, was this quiet that was so
quiet it felt like an unending, sympathetic smile. He’s dead, I finally said.
Just those words, ripped and ringing like a gunshot. His body was beautiful. So
still and little, too little, to say body.
I sat down beside him. Ran my hand along
his chest. Then he coughed. And water began draining from the corners of his
mouth.
A long cry came from his open mouth,
making my body clench so tightly onto itself that I thought I’d never move
again, and just sat there watching him cry for—for I don’t know how long. That smile,
the one the quiet had held, broke into sarcastic laughter.”
Cody
“It was when the bible came to me. I was
twenty-four, married, and had two girls already; and hell, I don’t know why,
but I hated it all. Then this May storm blew in while I was driving to work at
the factory, where I was pulling twelve-hour night shifts—six to six. I didn’t
think much of it then, except that I hadn’t fixed the roof for leaks and I’d be
getting it good when I got home— which made me hate it all even more as I walked
into the factory and got to work.
Then, at four or so the next morning,
while still at work, I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, and saw how the
rain was still coming. I mean, it was really pouring. And, by the look of the
water flooding the parking lot, it seemed like it’d hadn’t broken at all since
yesterday evening.
I stood there smoking, just watching it.
Then only hearing it.
Soon I only smelt it: that odor the rain
puts off once it’s firmly mixed itself with concrete, or with the rubber from
truck tires, or after sliding off long slates of metal roofing; or all of them
together: that good odor of God, I guess, coming back to us, and the things
we’ve made.
Then I only felt it, as the water rose to
the step where I was standing. And it came over to me take the water in, all at
once, in every which way I knew myself capable, so that, without thinking, I
dropped to my knees, moved my mouth down to the water, and slurped it up.
And it was all over me. In me. And was
me.
So much so, that, suddenly, I couldn’t
handle myself anymore. Like I said, I really hated it all then, and had been
for so long at that point, that as I both took and became that water, and
knew—not like it was coming to me for the first time, but like I was
remembering it—that I couldn’t hate anymore, that I just couldn’t: the
realization knocking a piece of myself from me, a piece of me that’d been
serving, for so long, as my core—propping and allowing every other part of
me—so that in losing it, I couldn’t be myself anymore.
But before I could even think any of that
through, I was running through the parking lot, where the was water was damn
near to my knees, then jumped into my truck, rolled down the windows—I don’t
know why—and hauled ass to get home, to my wife and girls.
The water was everywhere, but I’m telling
you, I believed then that I was the water, or that it was only me, moving
everywhere, at every moment, wherever I moved; so even though I couldn’t see a
thing through my windshield, I don’t remember ever being scared.
Then I was just a little under a mile
from home, when a rush of water, which I’d later learn had flooded from the Red
River, hit me: popping into the side of my truck and shoving it, with me
inside, into the ditch. Still—I’m telling you, I was crazy with this conviction
that the water and I were just extensions of each other—I wouldn’t stop.
Climbing through my open window, I decided to swim what remained of the way.
And I swear to you, I made it.
Granted, it turned out I didn’t have to
swim the whole way, or even far at all; our house being, then, on a pretty
steep hill, and myself already a good ways into the rise when my truck got
swamped, that I only swam a hundred yards at most, when the ground beneath me
rose high enough for my feet to find footing, and allowed me to manage a steady
run.
Then I was there, home.
My wife, who must have been up watching
the storm and then seen me running into the yard like a maniac, had come out
onto the porch, and was just standing there, watching me as I just stood there
too. Water mumbled past my waist, while I looked straight into the sky, seeing,
at that moment I swear to you, Heaven’s Window wide open again; and the Bow—the
one that God had told Noah he’d tucked away in the clouds—brought out once
more, and stretched back so tight, it looked a big, stupid grin.”
Timothy
“I was just driving to the courthouse—heading
to pay the fine I owed after pleading guilty to the public intoxication I’d
been charged with after having gotten drunk one night, a few months back,
outside both myself and home: the cops found me walking down a usually deserted
road outside town: I’m divorced and live alone, walking and talking to myself
like I don’t know myself, on some nights, is just what I do—when I saw this
young Mennonite woman crossing the street, fighting a strong south wind, and
corralling two tiny boys, one beneath each of her hands, all at the same time.
A couple thick strands of auburn hair
had fallen out from her prayercovering. And I swear, if her hair reached her
nose, it reached her ass.
The wind was blowing her skirt and
blouse flat against her body, revealing so fully its shape and tenderness that
I doubt I could’ve seen it better if she were to have walked past me naked; and
she was holding her hands over those boys’ necks with such love in her eyes,
looking up and down the street for oncoming cars, that I had to pull my truck
over, finally letting all the little good moments of my own marriage—the one
I’d let crumble and blow away to nothing, right at my feet, without doing nothing—come
rushing back to me, so that, suddenly, I was crying for the first time since I
was little boy, just like those two she had, not caring who might have seen me.
That was on a Saturday, and believe it
or not, after paying my fines, I went home and got drunk again. A real heavy
drunk, which kept me up all night, and carried me into the next morning, where
I set out walking again, but, this time, instead of just walking nowhere, as I
usually do, so I can feel like I’m nowhere, and nothing, by my own choice; I
walked right into this Assembly of God, a few miles from my home, and sat down
in the front pew.
I never heard a word of that sermon,
though, crying as much as I was.”
Brett
“My older boy had broken his neck. He’d
dove into my sister’s pool, where it was too shallow to have done so—just like
he knew not to, just like I’d told him a dozen times not to.
My brother-in-law, who was by the pool,
digging around in his tomato garden; heard the sudden quiet fall, like a wet
towel, over the yard: the kind of quiet that you should never hope to hear
while children are around; then looked to the pool, seeing, as he says, ‘just
the back end of some little ripples, rolling on out to the end of themselves,
and Brett’s boy nowhere to be seen;’ then jumped into the pool—as he says, ‘in
my garden clothes and all,’—and pulled him from the water, as he says,
‘unconscious, his little body limp as a dead linnet.’
By the time they’d called me at my work,
and I’d driven quick as I could to the hospital, the doctor wouldn’t even see
us anymore, and Chet, my boy, couldn’t move one damn part of himself past the
top of his chest.
We live in a small town, in Texas. When
Chet broke his neck, it was mid-September—a few weeks from his twelfth
birthday— and he’d been playing running back for our town’s peewee football
team, the Cardinals, which had already, with Chet included—who was also their
best player, but isn’t saying much, considering how sorry the whole team
was—only the bare minimum of players required by the league to play.
And since I knew Chet loved that team, and
since I had my other boy, Cody, who was only nine, which was still too young to
play, but who was stout enough, and had gone with Chet to all his practices, so
seemed to know the better half of both the team’s and football’s concepts; I
talked to the coach of the Cardinals, telling him my other boy, Cody, could play—just
to fill out the roster, and let the other boys continue to play.
Then, because I already had the coming
Saturday off from work, having intended to watch Chet play, and because Chet’s
mother, my first wife, was spending the day with him at the hospital—and I
didn’t want to chance a fight with her around Chet, who was still in that low
mood he was stuck in for a while after his accident—I went ahead to the game,
to watch Cody, who I didn’t expect to play or anything, but figured it’d be a good
thing to show him some attention in that moment.
When I got there it was already a few
minutes into the third quarter—I’d went, regardless of my ex-wife, to sit with
Chet for a while anyway, I couldn’t help myself. The Cardinals were already
down four touchdowns. Mike, the man I sat down by, told me of how the running
back who’d taken Chet’s place had twisted his ankle on his second run of the
game, and then the boy, who replaced the boy who replaced Chet, got popped
pretty hard right before half-time, then, once in the locker-room—a little shed
behind the concession stand—wouldn’t stop crying, had thrown his helmet and
shoulder pads to the ground, then refused to leave the locker room, even once
his father went in there, calling him a pussy and every other name that I’m
sure his own father had called him in his time too.
So, because the coach, I guess, didn’t
know what else to do, or had nothing else to do, he sent Cody in there to play
running back.
On the first two plays, the quarterback
kept it himself, trying his best to skirt around the edge of the line as soon
as he felt the ball meet his hands, but it all added up to nothing, to more
than nothing, really, to negative five yards.
So, since there wasn’t a chance in hell
of wining, or of even getting a first down, on the next play the quarterback
pitched the ball to Cody, unbelievably slow and with such visible remorse that
it seemed he figured he might as well have been tossing it directly to the
other team.
The ball hit Cody square in his chest,
right between the numbers, two and one, on the front of his jersey, popping off
his shoulder pads and falling to the ground. Now, our team’s line was shit, too
little and too untalented to do much of anything against the boys from the
other team; so there were about five of them already running free towards Cody
as he was still looking on the ground for the ball.
I was standing up now, trying to shout
at the refs to just blow the damn whistle or something, but couldn’t get a
sound out before Cody had found and whipped the ball up from the ground, just
in time for the other’s team’s boys to rush, full speed, into him.
But he didn’t fall. He shoved himself
back from them with his free arm, putting him eight yards behind the line of
scrimmage, then came sprinting towards the sideline, where I was standing, and
I thought he was going to run right into the bleachers with me, which I hoped
he would. I wanted to get a hold of him and take him home.
But then he turned up field, toward the
end zone, running, all of a sudden, faster than I’d ever seen Chet, or any boy
his age, run, leaving every other player on the field at least ten yards
behind. By then, the crowd had gotten on its feet, screaming and clapping; and
even the other running back, who’d refused to leave that little shed, had quit
crying, and was watching from the doorway of the shed.
My mouth was
still locked open, still trying to pull the shout from myself that I’d
committed to just a moment earlier, so that when I did shout, it seemed to come
with effort, without thought: the words that pushed, like water, from my mouth,
‘The Lord giveth.’”
Chet
“My memory.
The things I saw and felt when I still
felt all of me: brushing against my father’s waist in the kitchen, as he
carried, in each hand, a smoking pan to the kitchen table; stepping in and out
of the shade, feeling the length of my body heat up or cool own, guiding it, as
I did, through both the yard and house, in and out of bed; assuaging
restlessness; falling down; falling to the water, the last I was ever fully
myself; this image, I can’t place, of a grown man crying in his pickup, as a
ball of sunlight, fighting through the windshield, fell onto him.”
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Author Travis Vick's poetry and fiction have appeared
in Booth, Burningword, Gone Lawn, Out of Our, S F & D, Sand, Thunderclap
Press, Tigertrain, and others. He currently works in a diaper factory,
volunteers teaching adults how to read (mostly using as material the poetry of
Roethke, J. Wright, and Oppen;) and lives alone in Texas.