However, when I say I have known crazy women, I do not mean to say that I have always known the extent of just how crazy they were (prior to their arrests, etc.). Quite the opposite, I have a long history of underestimating the craziness of crazy women, and because of this shortcoming, let us call it, I have had, many times over, to swear them off entirely, to go cold turkey on crazy women, but it appears I command an eerie capacity for denial, and of course on some level, more mundane, I must be crazy myself. After all, no man is completely sane after his fourth crazy woman. Crazy women lay eggs into your ears, and if you’re not good at deciding whether women are crazy, or gauging how crazy they actually are, or if you’re just game about giving murkily beautiful women the benefit of the doubt, then you end up considering some strange and spooky theories on life. Creaking doors open into pink bedrooms piled high with the predatory eyes of stuffed animals. Crazy women tend to describe these haunted bedrooms to you vividly. They entice you into having sex within the confines of these supposed realities, the domed ceiling painted lasciviously with hovering goddesses and guardian angels and wild-haired prophets, and for a while the two of you live together in that space-time vacuum conceived during some childhood trauma involving an unleashed adolescent brother or a drunken stepfather or so-called uncle. Inside this hallucinatory mansion, you throw a bunch of dishes at each other or murder one of the neighborhood dogs, you explain things to cops or thank them profusely, and life goes on in this manner until someone gets led away in handcuffs or we find ourselves late at night once again shoveling away under the Mississippi stars, my dear, my one true love.
Hero
by Michael Farris Smith
Magnolia
Hero and his dog Spur stare down the tracks, mimics of one another in the summer sun. Hero’s ribs can be counted from a block away and he’s clotheless except for sneakers and cutoffs. Spur’s thin face hangs on his neck and his coat is mud-colored and matted. Both underfed, both with hollow faces, four eyes staring down the tracks anxious for God knows what.
“Dumb-ass,” Wayne grumbles as the Ford clatters past Hero. “He’s got as much sense as a brick.” Wayne turns right at the first street past the tracks. At the third house on the left he pulls into the dirt driveway. I live in the house next door.
Living on the tracks in Magnolia has never been that bad. I can deal with the rumbles and whistles that seem like some strange heartbeat of small-town south Mississippi. It’s living across the tracks. Only the tax assessor’s office and the mailman acknowledge us. All the business buildings have that long-moved-out-of look, with boards nailed across busted windows and spiderwebs that look like nets swinging from the corners of abandoned entrances. The large wooden houses are grand but have paint chipping so bad that after a strong wind it looks like snow has fallen across the yards. Kids steal bikes because theirs were stolen. The neighborhood is filled with abandoned cars, teenage moms, dirt lawns, and makes people say, “I bet a long time ago this used to be such a nice neighborhood,” as they ride by with their windows up and doors locked and air conditioners blowing.
“Son of a bitch,” Wayne says as he gets out of the truck and slams the door shut. His muscles flex through the thin T-shirt he wears to work nearly every day. I get out and we stand there looking at Hero and the dog, still glaring down the railroad tracks as if the drive-in movie was on the other end. “Hero! Get the hell away from there, boy!”
“He’s all right, Wayne. Won’t be a train until later on,” I say as I walk behind the truck on my way home.
“I ain’t worried about no train. Wish one would hit his ass.”
I keep walking, too tired to listen to any more of Wayne’s rumblings. I’ve suffered ten hours of it already today. I feel heavy, drained from a day in the sun. I climb the concrete steps of my house and sit down on the porch in a recliner I picked up out of somebody’s garbage one day, and watch Hero and Spur.
Nobody remembers the last time Hero talked. He’s about eleven now, and he quit somewhere between five and six, though the date isn’t certain because Wayne and Doris either didn’t realize it or plain ignored it. There’s Wayne’s side of it, that Hero’s dumb and born that way, and Doris says little more than that except she swears one day Hero will snap out of it. And I have my own notions, listening to the crashing and tumbling that goes on in the house next to mine, the walls so thin I hear Wayne’s beer cans crush at night, and I grimace when he screams, “Goddamnit!” and Doris yells, “Wayne, stop it!” and the racket of a wrestling match follows complete with traveling furniture and flying pots.
Over my shoulder a timer clicks and a buzz begins, and in the window behind me a blue neon hand shines with red letters that read, Darna’s Psychic Readings. The light comes on at six o’clock every evening and glows until midnight, signifying the doctor is in for the curious, confused, unoccupied minds of the city blocks surrounding us. The door opens and I know Darna’s behind me.
“’Bout time. Where y’all been?” a slow, angry voice asks.
“Workin’, Darna. Where else?” I say without turning around.
“Where else my ass. You and Wayne ain’t been workin’ all this time. I’m open now so don’t sit on this porch long. I don’t want you running off business.” When she finishes she goes inside.
“Guess you heard that,” a softer voice says.
I turn around and there’s Haley. Her aqua tank top fits loose, race-car-red lipstick her only makeup. “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you were there.”
“I was trying to be quiet. Darna scares me too.”
“She doesn’t scare me. I just get tired of hearing it, that’s all. I swear to God. One day I’m outta here.”
“Yeah, right,” Haley says. She’s Darna’s younger sister, but as different from Darna as a kitten from a bull. Her legs and arms show off a July brown and she’s skinny like me.
“I am,” I say again. “One day.”
“And go where and do what? Maybe you can join the circus.” She laughs and juggles imaginary bowling pins.
“Go ahead and make fun, Haley. Just like Darna does. Never takes me serious.”
“Stop it. You know I’m not like Darna. Just relax. You want a beer?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You’ve got until I get back to quit pouting.” Haley goes inside and returns with Budweiser cans for each of us.
“C’mon. Sit down,” I say, and get up to let her have the recliner. I unfold an aluminum chair that’s leaning against the wall. “You want in on the checker match?”