Vicodin & Venice

Come sit on this mossy log on the steaming hot bank of the deep wide brook, by the cattails lilypads and skunk cabbages. Draw angry-looking knife—cut off left pinkie finger, at the first joint—push fingertip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Sit back down.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine.

Wince.

Pain.

###

Pain is a terrible thing, said Pamela from the barstool, waving her drink at the bartender. You know that?

Sure, nodded the tall ruddy faced bartender. He slowly wiped a glass with a checkered towel as he spoke.

I’ve had some terrible pain, continued the bartender. You ever had surgery?

No, said Pamela to the bartender. Have you?

Yes—yes. Gall bladder. The post-operative pain is horrible. You get good pills though.

Good pills?

Yes, said the bartender. Percocet. To take once you get home. You know. Good for what ails ya’!

Grinning, the bartender once more topped off her drink.

Her hand wrapped around it. She took a long drink.

###

Draw angry-looking knife—cut off left ring finger, at the first joint—push fingertip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Sit back down.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine

Wince.

Pain.

###

Coolie went across the slick ice to his car to get the last bag of groceries. He gathered up the bag in his arms and slammed shut the car door and started back across the ice toward his front door.

Across the street the brownhaired neighbor woman worked at knocking some fat icicles down with a long wooden pole.

Coolie walked, and—Bang!  He was down flat on his back, the grocery bag split open and the contents spread out to the side. There was no pain. Something had pulled the legs out from under him. He rolled over, and slowly got to his feet. Freed by the sunlight, water dropped from long icicles all along Coolie’s eaves.

Having seen Coolie fall, the neighbor woman paused, and watched with the long wooden pole held at her side.

Pain came in the back of Coolie’s head. He stooped to get his groceries back into the split open bag. The pain in the back of his head shrank to a single point of splitting pain right at the base of his skull, and the groceries and split bag blurred off to the side and he went down again as the pain faded and the black came up around him and he felt nothing more. The cold came up in him. The icicles continued to shed water and sparkled in the winter sun.

The neighbor woman dropped her pole and started out across her icy yard toward Coolie.

###

Draw angry-looking knife—cut off left middle finger, at the first joint—push fingertip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Sit back down.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine.

Wince.

Pain.

###

Gobbo stood in his blood-spattered apron at the fast-moving conveyor belt and tapped his razor-sharp knife against the steel conveyor side. The fish came down the line, one by one, and as each one reached him, he quickly and deftly picked it up and sliced off the head and tossed the head into a stained cardboard barrel to the side. The rest of the fish continued down the line.

The cables running below the line slapped against the thin conveyor rollers.

On the other side of the line, the whiteshirted supervisor stood with his sleeves rolled up counting the dark cartons stacked on a pallet with a brown clipboard hung in his hand.

The slapping of the cables mixed with the hiss of the rollers turning and the sound shrouded both men.

Gobbo beheaded the fish one after the other and pictured such a line with human bodies coming down the line, and great red devils thirty feet tall barechested with pointed beards cutting the heads off the human bodies and tossing the heads into a stained cardboard barrel to the side.

A sudden clang came from the conveyor, as would happen from time to time.

The whiteshirted supervisor stepped back from the pallet of dark cartons and raised his clipboard and squinted into it and got out a long white pen and wrote on the paper on the clipboard. His face was long, like that of a horse. He took the clipboard to his glass-walled office and held the clipboard in one hand and dialed a number with the other, a scowl crossing his face.

At about four p.m. the conveyor broke down and a mechanic came with a black tool box and poked around under the line with a long screwdriver.

The fish lay motionless in the silence.

Gobbo idly leaned against the line, his arms folded. He thought of where they took the barrels of heads to. He pictured a row of filthy overflowing garbage dumpsters out back of the building, the dirty asphalt around them littered with glassy-eyed heads, the cats sitting on and around the dumpsters, licking their oily paws, their tails flicking.

###

Draw angry-looking knife—cut off left index finger, at the first joint—push fingertip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Sit back down.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine.

Wince.

Pain.

###

Bruno polished the antique car quickly, rubbing the wax out in great wide circles, cocking his head from time to time to squint into the deep finish and admire his work.

Beneath the old car the rust worked silently eating into the thick metal of the frame.

Next door the crewcutted potbellied neighbor placed a yellow sprinkler in the center of his lawn and followed the green hose toward the outside spigot.

Bruno’s antique car set on its big balloon tires and Bruno worked his way around the car rubbing hard. The car had cost him two thousand dollars and was in fairly bad shape except for the sharp gleaming black paint job. Bruno’s hands moved fast wiping off the wax and all at once his hand went across a sharp piece of old-fashioned trim by the grille and was ripped open. The rag fell to the ground and he gripped the ripped hand.

Fuck! he exclaimed, as he turned from the car.

A spider had spun a web up in the hidden recesses under the car and sat waiting for prey.

The yellow sprinkler next door went on and threw water in a wide circle out across the browning lawn. The neighbor wiped his feet on a mat before stepping back into the house.

Bruno headed for his house to wash out and bandage up this deep rip in the side of his palm. It’s true, he thought. It’s true they don’t make them like they used to.

The yellow sprinkler spun steadily, no one watching, splashing water out and over and onto the hard bone-dry ground.

The rust continued its work under the car and the spider hung by two legs from its web.

###

Draw angry-looking knife—cut off left thumb, at the first joint—push thumbtip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Sit back down.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine.

Wince.

Pain.

                                                                     ###

He had done it.

The field around him stretched for miles.

Blood oozed from his brother’s earhole.

He held his big hands before his face and looked into the palms. The raw red palms felt dirty.

What to do now?

The flow of blood slowed.

These hands were different now than they had been before.

These hands had done it.

But what to do now?

The blood lay in the curve of the lobe of his brother’s ear and began to congeal.

Turning, he thrust them down in his pockets.

A mild breeze rippled the indian grass scattered through the field.

Brother’s heart was silent. Nothing bled.

He stood there.

He had to do something to cover this up.

But what?

He went a mile off to get his car.

The field was much the same without him as with him.

Blood began pooling in the low points of his brother’s body.

He came and backed up the car and opened up the trunk.

The mild breeze wrapped around him.

He used the hands to put it in the trunk. Arms and legs flopped around, then lay still.

He drove away toward the flooded quarry, leaving the field behind. Twilight rose about him. It was that time of day when if you were just plopped down in the day like that, you’d not be able to tell if it were dawn, or dusk, except possibly by the position of the sun.

###

Draw angry-looking knife—cut off right pinkie finger, at the first joint—push fingertip onto sharp stick—push stick in the water. Sweat drips down under your shirt.

Pain.

Ignore.

Sit and wait as blood drips making black mud in the dirt.

Big pickerel comes and gobbles down finger.

Pull out Colt forty-five—shoot fish.

Wade in, get dead fish. Blood clouds the water; two bloods mix.

Cauterize wound with big Zippo Marine Corps lighter—the kind they used to advertise in LIFE magazine.

Wince.

Pain.

String up the ten fish, take them home. Clean wrap and freeze. The fingertips come out in the guts.  Throw them in the battered trash can.

Pain.

Grit teeth and go to old doctor.

Say Look at my hands. They throb.

Doctor’s tarnished instruments are lined up on a tray.

Doctor says why did you do this.

To get ten fish, you say.

Where are the severed fingertips?

Gone.

Oh.

You have a high tolerance for pain, my friend.

I know.

Regardless, get an injection for pain.

Ten wounds are washed and bandaged.

Get a prescription for Vicodin and for some antibiotics.

Get prescriptions filled.

Go home. Doctor said take two Vicodin every four hours.

Take four pills every two hours.

Take the first four Vicodin, get a soda, get in the comfy chair, and spend the sunny mild weekday afternoon alone in the house reading a National Geographic article about Venice.