An Observation of Two Men Working to Save A Life
I once watched a man die in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I watched from inside my car as two paramedics did all they could to save him. They worked hard to keep his heart beating.
It looked exhausting.
The two of them, there on their knees, one to each side of the man.
The man lying on the pavement beside his car, his arms and legs stretched out and spread wide like a dying cartoon.
The blue door of his nineteen-ninety-something Oldsmobile left wide open. A sixty-four ounce plastic soda cup left on the roof.
The paramedics. One was old, the other young. The young one was skinny and had pimples on his face. The old one was fat and had scars from pimples on his face.
I remember thinking, as I watched them sweat, that they worked well together. I thought the two of them made a good team.
The old one was throwing the whole of his weight into the mans chest with every compression. The young one sucking gallons of air into his own lungs before transferring it all into those of the dying man.
They made no eye contact. They said nothing. They worked tirelessly.
They shared something. Something more than the power to save lives. Or the desire to at least try. I didn’t know what they shared.
And then I thought maybe I did. I started to see these two as one person. Older and younger versions of each other. I was happy to think that one or the other had traveled back or forth through time to be here for his younger or older self. I wondered why one might have traveled through time to be here for the other. I wondered if either of them had a clue. Was this something they had discussed? While sitting in their rig waiting for work, maybe?
I noticed they had stopped doing anything.
They stretched their backs up straight. The old one let his tired arms fall to his sides, the young one put his on his head. The old one was panting like a dog. The young one took another deep breath, and with no one to breathe it into, let it out with a defeated sigh. For the first time since I had started watching them, they looked right at each other.
At the same time, as one, they both stood up. The old one first getting a foot under himself before pushing off his knee with both his hands. He leaned against the blue Oldsmobile with his hands again to his sides. Still panting, though slower. Catching his breath, now. His eyes went back to the body.
The young one rose to his feet without any trouble at all. He leaned against nothing. His breathing was stable. He put his hands in his pockets and looked to his tired old partner, shaking his head at his future self.
Copyright © June 2009 Chris La Cour
The Sacrifice : Three Short Stories
God’s Call
She talks to the cool air that blankets and rides the waves and swells. Her feet, white as porcelain, slowly turning purple, and as wrinkled as a bathing child’s fingertips, struggle to keep their grip on the polished rocks. Her dress is pressed flat to her thighs, stomach and breasts by the wind coming off the water, it shows an orange aura, the glow of the sun setting behind her. Her arms hang at her sides, in each fist she holds a tight bunch of the black silk dress.
“I’m sorry.” she says.
“I did love him, really.” she tells the water. She tells the air.
Her words turn to white smoke.
He had that tattoo on his chest, Clara. She would lay on her side, next to him in bed, the both of them naked, and she would trace the lines with her finger. He would pull a lungs worth of smoke from his cigarette before twisting his arm around to offer her a drag. Distracted by the black letters, tracing the filigree flowing off the top of the letter C, framing the other letters, tracing the letters l, a, r, a; every time, she would nearly forget that it was poisoned. “No, thank you.” she would whisper as she flicked her finger away from the tail of that last letter a.
Steam boiled out from her lungs as she sobbed.
A raven at the rivers edge picks at something, some garbage in the mud. His head twitches and jerks. She recalls the seizures. The birds black feathers, this is the color of the blood in his urine, towards the end. The birds black eyes, the color of his veins, the day she came home and finally found him dead. In the birds shadow she saw the bruises, the ones he would get just from sitting on something that wasn’t soft enough, the black and green bruises he got from resting his elbows on the table. The birds dirty, yellow, claw feet are the same color that he wore under his eyes and around his mouth. The same yellow color that the mortician couldn’t hide, no matter how much foundation he caked on.
He looks good, they would say, as they hugged her, standing next to his casket or as they held both of her hands at her waist, in both of theirs.
“It’s for the better.” his aunt had told her.
“It was Gods call.” the pastor told her.
“No, it wasn’t.” she told herself. She told the water. The air. The raven.
The raven stretched his wings from his side and smacked at the air, furiously taking flight. It was the loudest thing.
Clara
This isn’t yet where you’re supposed to apologize.
Not yet.
This is in her car.
The two of us.
And I’m telling her, it’s ok, people do this kind of thing all the time.
She’s stopped talking.
Stopped apologizing.
But I still hear her.
She’s spinning those words through her head.
Around and around.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
This is our second time meeting like this.
This is behind the backs of everyone we know.
And I’m telling her, it’s ok.
I’m telling her, we won’t get caught.
I tell her to go slow.
To take it easy.
Not to rush things, I say.
I tell her that’s how people do get caught.
They get too excited.
They get careless, I say.
Sloppy.
And they get caught.
I tell her, just one drop at a time.
In his coffee.
His cigarette.
In his breakfast, his eggs or on his toast.
Wherever.
But just one at a time, I say.
Let the poison do it’s work.
Slowly.
The Sacrifice
If only I could bottle her tears. If I could somehow drink them down and make them my own. I would.
But she doesn’t know this. I love her and she doesn’t know it.
In fact, she’s killing me. For all the wrong reasons, she’s killing me.
I tell her so, that I love her, but she doesn’t hear me.
She doesn’t listen. Not anymore.
I don’t know where she’s getting it, but I know what it is. I know what she’s doing.
And I know how she’s doing it. I can taste it.
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.
I don’t taste it in my cigarettes, but she doesn’t share them with me anymore, so I suspect I’m smoking it too.
It causes me so much pain. The poison.
It helps to imagine the pain as hers, now mine. Because I do love her. And, well, if I can take her pain and somehow bottle it and drink it down and make it my own, I will.
Copyright © February 2009 Chris La Cour
One Way
When the bus starts, that sound, that mechanical, combustible mash up, that noise, it makes her smile.
It’s a gentle smile.
With her eyes closed and her head laid back against the seat, she’s grinning.
For a change, she’s happy.
Copyright © August 2008 Chris la Cour
Step on a Crack…
There are one hundred and ten cracks in the hall floor that leads from my room to hers.
Give or take.
I’m guessing.
I’ve never even come close to being right with any of those – guess how many of this or of that are in the jar – games.
I’m no good at guessing anything.
Guess what?
What?
Really, just tell me, because if I have to guess, if I really have to, well, then we’re going to be here a while.
So, the number of cracks in that hall, could be half my guess, could be more.
And you know what? I finally don’t care.
It starts as a childhood game. Step on a crack and break your mothers back.
You don’t want to break dear old mom’s back, do you? Who wants a paraplegic mother? Who’ll do the cooking? Dad? Who’ll do the cleaning? Dad? Who wants a paraplegic wife?
Why couldn’t we have just walked to school or to the park without forcing upon ourselves all of this stress? Our eyes concentrated on the sidewalk, looking out for cracks, looking out for mom, for dad and for ourselves.
This is where compulsions come from. This kind of stupid shit. It’s what makes us crazy.
First it’s cracks in the sidewalk. Then, before you know it, your tip-toeing your way through your high schools halls. Carefully moving from tile to tile, careful not to step on any seams, because by now, seams count as cracks. Twelve inches at a time, you wouldn’t dare skip a tile for fear of losing your balance and dropping your foot on a seam.
The kids in school, they call you tip-toes. They mimic you. They exaggerate, moving very slowly, deliberately stepping too high, like stepping over something big but invisible.
Only they’re not exaggerating.
This went on for years, even after high school. No medications had yet been able to suppress it. This compulsive avoidance of cracks.
My first apartment had to have wall to wall carpet. Could you imagine hardwood floors? I would have gone completely nuts.
Later, well into my twenties, I bought a house. Again, wall to wall carpet throughout.
Then, one day, I got a phone call. And I ripped out every bit of that carpeting. Flooding my house with a sea of inescapable seams. The cracks that I have been avoiding all my life. Now, completely unavoidable.
I figured, what the hell? Why not? Given what had happened and all.
It was my father who had called.
I had always wondered how it would happen. Like voodoo? Wherever she stood, just collapsed, snapped in half, the fault of her own clumsy son.
She was driving home from work, he said.
I stood with my foot still weighting the crack. Pausing like I had just heard the click of a land mine underfoot. Like the soldier in a movie. Click. The click of a snapping vertebra. When I lift my foot her spine will explode. Shit. Poor mom. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me. Poor mom.
It was a dump truck, rear ended her at a stop light, he said.
The guy never even touched the brakes, he said.
I was too afraid to call.
I knew that, had mom buckled over with a snap, in the grocery store or at the salon or wherever, dad would call.
And he did. And of course, she broke her back.
Full paralysis.
Dad lasted just over a year. Then he left. No excuse. No apology. No forwarding address.
I later found out that he left mom for some young blond thing. Considering that, I figure he tired of making love to a rag doll with a talking head.
After dad left her, I moved her in with me. It was the least I could do, after all, I did break my mothers back.
Copyright © July 2008 Chris LaCour
The End of Every Story
Here’s the thing that’ll make this story a little bit different. Right here, somewhere in the first few paragraphs, will be the end. The spoiler.
Ready?
Really, I’m going to skip the beginning and shoot straight on through to the end.
Okay, here.
By the end of this story, everyone in it will be dead.
There will be no one left for me to write about and nothing more for you to read about.
Not the main character, not his girlfriend. Not even their fucking dog is going to survive this one.
But, really, don’t stop reading just because you already know how it ends.
So they all die. Isn’t that the end of every story? To yours? Mine? To everyones?
Yes, it is.
I say, fuck the end. What is it anyway? It’s nothing. Isn’t it the means to the end that counts?
Yes, it is.
Everybody’s story begins and ends just the same. Except for this one.
How is this one any different? I haven’t written it yet. That’s how it’s different. That’s why I had no problem with spoiling my own story. I have about as much a clue as you. I don’t yet know who the main character is and I don’t know anything about his girlfriend. I’m not even sure what kind of dog I’m going to burden them with.
They all do die though. That much I’ve decided. Sounds shitty, I know. But, it’s what I’m in the mood for.
And you know what? Lets add another character. Yes, let’s give the main character a friend.
And since I’m obviously feeling a bit morbid, let’s put him in the ground as well.
This friend, he’s not really going to be that important. Lets say his death will mean about as much to us as does his appearance here in this paragraph. But he is worth mentioning as he is now a part of the story.
He’s not that important? What then, is my problem? Why would I even write him into the story if I’m just going to senselessly kill him?
Instead of writing something that obviously leads to a fatal overdose, like…
He pinched the syringe between two fingers, drumming the plunger with his thumb. He took three deep breaths, in and out.
I ain’t never shot this much dope before, he told her.
Well, then you’d better hold on to something, she said.
Couldn’t I write something like…
He was about to pump his veins full of too much heroin when, in her eyes, he saw his mother.
He was six years old and he was sitting next to her on a Boeing seven-something-seven. They were on their way to Chicago. He had the window seat and he took pictures of the earth and clouds from thirty thousand feet.
He couldn’t wait to see his grandparents and tell them how cool flying is.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The FASTEN SEAT BELTS signs lit up and a stewardess made an announcement as the plane began to rock and shake.
People started to cry.
people hugged babies to their chests.
People held hands.
The plane was falling.
His stomach felt light.
His heart hung in his throat.
The plane was crashing.
More people were crying now.
People were saying I love you.
People were praying.
I’m scared, he told his mother.
Well, then you better hold on to something, she said.
And now, with this young topless girl kneeling in front of him as he sits on the living room floor, his back against the flickering screen of an old television set, he begins to cry. He drops the syringe, still full of heroin and collapses into her warm body. Wrapping his arms tightly around her.
Sure, I guess it could’ve gone like that. But I don’t like it. Not for this story. So, that’s not how it went.
It went like this…
When the topless girl told him that he’d better hold onto something, he reached out and grabbed her tit. He stabbed the needle into a vein and sunk the plunger.
He squeezed her too hard and she smacked his hand, telling him to fuck off.
His body shook hard.
He opened his mouth and emptied his stomach into her lap.
She screamed. He squeezed.
His eyes rolled up into his forehead and his grip on her tit relaxed as he slumped to the floor.
Dead.
She crawled to the couch and screamed for her boyfriend, Jimmy.
Jimmy. Our main character.
Not so much in the traditional sense, though. More so only because he’s going to be the link that ties everyone together. Including the dog I mentioned earlier.
The friend. Our first death.
Jimmy knows him from high school.
How he ended up in Jimmy’s living room, holding onto Jimmy’s half naked girlfriend’s tit while offing himself like a rock star, is one of those things that is more chance than anything else.
The two of them hadn’t seen each other in years. Recently, when they ran into each other, Jimmy couldn’t even remember his name.
But he still invited his old friend over to party.
Jimmy’s girlfriend. He calls her Rose.
This isn’t her name. It’s Anne or Shelly or something like that. It doesn’t matter though because he’s only ever called her Rose. And she likes it.
She has a small tattoo of a rose on her ass. Hence, Rose.
During sex, Jimmy has always used the tattoo as a focal point. To keep from triggering.
The two of them also met in high school. They’ve been sleeping together and doing drugs with each other ever since.
The dog. I still don’t know what kind it is.
It’s a stray that Jimmy found sniffing around the back of some convenience store.
He’s had it for over a year and he still hasn’t named it.
Now I’ve found a problem with starting at the end.
I’ve already decided that everyone dies. But I haven’t decided how.
I killed the friend. That was easy. Now I have to kill Jimmy, Rose and the dog. But how?
Do I even have to?
I was comfortable with killing the friend, because I started the story with the idea that he wasn’t anyone important. Nothing special. I mean, Jimmy couldn’t even remember his name.
But the problem is, by now, I’m not so sure I want to kill Rose.
I bet she’s sweet. In some weird, white trash, junkie sort of way.
And besides, she prances around topless and she’s got that cute little rose tattooed on her butt.
What’s not to love about her?
And Jimmy. James. Jimbo. Jimmy boy. I don’t know. I’m sure he’s alright.
Maybe when he comes running into the living room from the bathroom or from wherever he was and sees old what’s his name lying dead in front of the TV, he’ll see where this road is going to take him and Rose.
Maybe he’ll want to steer them toward a better path.
And the dog. If I’m not going to kill Jimmy or Rose, I’m certainly not going to kill the dog.
I am going to name him, though.
I think I’m going to call him lucky.
Copyright © July 2008 Chris la Cour
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