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Fiends
one
Three animals. Two dogs, one pig. They play every day in an abandoned cemetery. They’re friends. But there’s social tension. For one thing, the pig’s a little older than the dogs. Let’s say the pig is three years old and the dogs are each two years old and one year old, respectively. Better yet, assume the dogs are brothers. Also, the pig is smarter and more adventurous than the dogs. He finds new things to do every day in this cemetery; he keeps things lively. He tells the dogs where to dig for turnips and worms; he takes the dogs on elaborate tours of blackberry bushes. Without the pig, the dogs would probably die of boredom. The dogs look up to the pig. They like the pig and respect the pig and want in turn to be liked and respected by the pig. Naturally, there is competition between the dogs for the pig’s attention. Brothers are like that. One hot summer day, the animals are all sitting around, drunk on blackberry juice, and the pig whispers something in the older dog’s ear. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” says the pig, “but you absolutely CANNOT tell your brother what I’m about to tell you. OK?” The older dog agrees to keep the thing that the pig has to say a secret. “Do you SWEAR not to say anything?” says the pig. The older dog swears. The pig nestles his snout up against the older dog’s ear and says, simply, “I like you better.” This makes the older dog noticeably happy. The younger dog sees the elation on his older brother’s face and is understandably jealous. He begins to whimper and whine. He bargains and he begs; he wants to be told the secret. The pig takes pity on the younger dog. “Fine,” says the pig. “I’ll tell you a different secret. It’s something you can never tell your brother. Are you prepared to keep this thing a secret?” The younger dog promises to keep the thing a secret. The pig winks at the older dog to establish that the thing he is about to tell the younger dog is not really true. Then he leans in to the younger dog and says: “I like you better.” In that instant, the two dogs run off into the woods, leaving the pig behind. There is no deliberation. The first chance they get, they betray the pig’s secret. None of the animals ever returns to the cemetery to play. The moral of this story, obviously, is that people are sociopaths.
two
Now two horses, a black horse and a brown horse, start coming to the cemetery. They’ve come to the cemetery to race. It’s what they do. They race in this cemetery. They’re best friends. But, again, there’s social tension. The black horse, you see, is much faster than the brown horse. Every time they race, the black horse wins. Eventually this whole racing-in-the-cemetery business gets really boring for the black horse. So one day the black horse says to the brown horse: “I’m going off to a place called Kentucky, to find faster horses to race.” The brown horse is clearly devastated by this news. “You can’t do that!” says the brown horse. “You’re my best friend! What am I supposed to do with the rest of my summer? There aren’t any horses for miles!” “I’m sorry,” says the black horse, “but I’ve made my decision. I might add that if you were really my friend, you would want me to realize my potential as a racehorse, and not idle away in some hick cemetery never knowing what I may have achieved were I given the benefit of a more cutthroat rivalry.” “Well,” says the brown horse, “rigorous, sustained competition is indeed an integral part of any sporting regimen, but ...” “Let us not waste our last day together bickering over what is and what is not. I have already made my travel arrangements. I am sorry.” “I have an idea,” says the brown horse. “Tomorrow we’ll race. If I win, you have to stay, and forget all about this place called Kentucky. If you win, you’re free to go. There won’t be any hard feelings.” Now, the black horse is thinking: I’ve been racing this stupid brown horse for close to two years. Never once has he beaten me. What’s one more race? I could use the extra practice. I owe it to my friend to give him one more shot at it. And so forth. Long story short, the black horse agrees to the brown horse’s wager. Next day, the two horses meet in the cemetery. “Remember our bargain,” says the brown horse. “If I beat you, you have to stay. If you win ...” “I remember,” says the black horse, and they both line up to race. The race begins. The brown horse puts everything he has into this race; this is his best friend in the world; everything rides on the result of this one race. Then something funny happens. Midway through the race, the black horse looks up and sees that the brown horse is actually winning. This has never happened before. And so the black horse starts putting everything he has into the race, and at the last moment, he beats the brown horse, but only by a hair. The horses take a few moments to catch their breaths. Then the brown horse turns to the black horse and says: “You’re not going to leave, right? The black horse is stupefied at the brown horse’s tenacity. “Of course I am. That was the bet. I won the race. I get to go to Kentucky. No hard feelings.” “But I almost beat you!” “But you didn’t beat me. The race was only close because I took it easy on the first leg. Down the stretch, I was clearly the faster horse.” “I can get better! I tell you this right now: this race has galvanized me. Stay another six months, and I promise, I’ll give you a run for your money. Then we can both go to Kentucky.” “Dude. This is pathetic. You’re a stable horse. I’m a thoroughbred. It’s time you face facts and realize your place in this world. Eating oats. Pulling plows. That sort of thing. Anyway, convey my warm regards to old Farmer Henry. Tell him I said ‘thanks’ for all the sugar cubes. So long, now, friend.” And just like that, the black horse turns to leave the cemetery, and the brown horse begins to whimper and weep. This whole time, an old frog has been watching the two horses argue. Disgusted by what he sees, the old frog runs over to the black horse and stands underfoot. Says the frog: “How dare you treat your friend with such blatant emotional disregard. I am appalled. I am shocked. Who cares if he’s not as fast? He’s your friend. You don’t just throw someone under the bus because they’re not perfect; you don’t base someone’s worth around your own selfish interests. Where, pray tell, is your humility, your allegiance, your grace, your compassion, your honor? In the barn with the rotting bales of hay and the upturned plow, one supposes. O noble equine, may I ask you what else in this environment is not to your liking? Are not the trees providing adequate shade? Is not the Sun shining strongly enough? You claim you’re a thoroughbred, but I dare say you’re an ass!” The black horse turns and looks at the brown horse. The brown horse looks at the black horse and exclaims: “Holy shit! A TALKING FROG?” I believe this story has something to do with the ineluctable meaninglessness of all interpersonal relations.
three
Nikki, Junior, and Darnell are friends. They hang out every day after school. They like coming to the cemetery because it’s a place where they can drink and do drugs and listen to Nikki’s radio and no one will bother them. Nikki loves her radio. This one time Nikki was waiting to catch the 51 C and some gutter punks from Mount Oliver knocked her down and took her radio and Junior and Darnell went looking for the gutter punks and found them drinking Fosters oil cans behind the BP and after a brief scuffle they got the radio back for Nikki and even went into the BP and bought her a fresh pack of batteries. Another time, one of the speakers on the radio blew out, and Darnell brought the radio home to his dad and together they fixed it. So this radio has been through a lot. The kids have also been through a lot. They’ve done time in Juvee. Their fingerprints are on record. Darnell is on probation for armed robbery. Nikki has been caught driving drunk in a stolen car -- twice. Junior sells crack. They’re basically good kids. Junior and Darnell are brothers, but they don’t look anything alike. Junior is tall and muscular and handsome. Darnell is short, doughy, and ugly in the face. Nikki is no prize either; her arms are fat, her face is full of pimples, and one of her eyes is droopy. Nikki is white; Junior and Darnell are black. But this distinction is unimportant. Nikki is not smarter than Junior and Darnell; neither are the boys more resourceful or more adventurous than Nikki. They’re all about equally lazy and dumb. Nikki has tattoos and dreadlocks. She wears ripped jeans and rock T-shirts. She has seen the band Ween play live 52 times. Junior and Darnell are into rap music of the “dirty South” persuasion. These two kinds of music are basically irreconcilable. You might think Nikki, Junior, and Darnell would spend a lot of time arguing over which tapes to play on Nikki’s radio, but they don’t. Some days they get down to T.I. and Luda; some days they jam out to Chocolate and Cheese. Junior and Darnell are equally athletically gifted, so competition between them is pointless. When playing basketball, they prefer to double up against other kids from the neighborhood. If Junior and Darnell were to race, the outcome of the race would depend on ancillary factors such as what Darnell had to eat that morning and how long Junior had stayed out drinking the previous night. One thing they all have in common: they’re poor. Nikki bags groceries for minimum wage. Darnell works at Burger King with his dad. Junior’s a hustler, but he’s irresponsible with the large rolls of cash he commands on the street, and so, even though he owns twenty pairs of sneakers, he never seems to have enough money for Newports. Darnell is frugal with his money; thus he usually has Newports. Nikki always has Newports. She steals them from work. So the kids don’t have much to worry about on the cigarette front. As long as one of them has Newports, they all have Newports. Junior and Darnell are from a big, loving, church-going family. Their mother once sang back-up for Dionne Warwick, does clerical work for a local nonprofit, and is a wizard with the ham hocks. Their father, a strict disciplinarian with a solid work ethic, can hardly be blamed if his sons have had a few unfortunate run-ins with the law. Nikki’s home life is truly awful. Her mom is an ex-prostitute and crack fiend who went to jail twenty years ago for assaulting a police officer and has behaved so badly in prison that she has yet to be released. Nikki was born in prison. Her father is a crack fiend as well as an alcoholic. Nikki’s father made Nikki quit school at age 14 so that she could go to work and support his wicked addictions. Nikki’s boss at Food Mart takes pity on Nikki’s horrible situation at home; he withholds twenty dollars from each of her pitiful paychecks which he gives to her in cash so that her father doesn’t take it and which Nikki proceeds to spend on beer and weed for herself and her friends. Nikki is Darnell’s girlfriend. Nikki used to be Junior’s girlfriend, but Junior couldn’t control himself around other females so Nikki dropped his cheating black ass and Darnell ended up sleeping with Nikki. But Nikki and Junior remain friends; in fact, they consider themselves “best friends.” Junior spends more time with Nikki than Darnell does, he talks to her on the phone every night for at least two hours, he receives so much psychological guidance from Nikki that he jokingly refers to her as “Dr. Nikki.” Darnell does not care that Nikki has slept with his brother. In fact, they openly discuss their sexual experiences with Nikki, and Junior even gives Darnell tips as to how Darnell can please her in bed. Junior is rooting for Nikki and Darnell to make it. He wants Darnell to marry Nikki because he thinks it would be cool if Nikki was his sister. He wants Nikki and Darnell to have lots of babies so that his family will become even more big and loving, and also because his future nieces and nephews will have to call him “Uncle Junior” like the old tortoise-looking guy on The Sopranos, which is one of Junior’s favorite television shows. When Nikki, Junior, and Darnell hang out together, they make jokes in regards to each others’ genitalia. There is no social tension among them. They all like and respect one another. One day Nikki comes to the cemetery without her little radio. Her right eye is purple and puffy and swollen shut. She is carrying a large bottle of whiskey. They pass the bottle around a few times, and eventually Junior asks Nikki what happened to her eye. “You did it,” she says. “Remember?” “What?” says Junior. “What?” says Darnell. “Last time we was drinking. Darnell, you was here. I hopped up off the gravestone and Junior turned around real quick and catched me in the face with his elbow. It was a accident.” “That ain’t no accident,” says Junior. “You gots clocked.” “Junior, stop playin’. You don’t remember nothin’ when you drunk. Darnell, you remember, don’t you?” “I remember,” says Darnell, and he winks at Junior to establish that what he is saying is not really true. “You was blunted and shitfaced. You thought you saw a ghost. You swung around and ... Blah-DOW.” “Oh yeah,” says Junior. “I guess that’s wha happened. I ‘member now. Sorry Nikki. My bad.” They drink some more whiskey and then Nikki has to go to work. She leaves them the bottle and the rest of her cigarettes, and after she’s gone, Junior and Darnell get to talking. “She’s lying,” says Junior. “I never elbowed her in the face. I would remember that.” “I know,” says Darnell, “It’s her dad. She lies ‘cause she’s embarrassed. And to keep him outta jail. That’s some family shit. We can’t do nothin’ about it.” “Yes we can,” says Junior. “We can ask this old frog what to do. Yo frog. How we get Nikki’s daddy to quit punchin’ on her.” He picks up the old frog and shakes it in his fist like a magic 8-ball. He puts his ear up to the old frog’s lips and pretends to listen to it tell him a secret. He passes the frog to his brother, and Darnell laughs and takes the little frog in his hand, and they both keep drinking. Who knows what the old frog said to Junior and Darnell. Maybe nothing. Maybe they acted out of self-defense. Maybe they acted on their impulses alone. Maybe they were sociopaths. Maybe they liked it in Juvee and wanted to go back. Maybe when they went to Nikki’s house and found Nikki’s father sitting at the kitchen table listening to the Pirates game on Nikki’s radio something in their heads just blew out like the speaker Darnell had fixed with his dad that one time. In any event, someone had to have taken the poultry cleaver out of the kitchen drawer, because the old man was found slumped over the table with his pants pulled down and his throat cut, and later that day Junior and Darnell were picked up driving around in the old man’s Chrysler with no explanation as to how the bloody radio had entered into their possession or why there was a poultry cleaver rolling around in the glove box with vials of crack and a gun. We could go by the police report. That might give us some answers. The three friends were put in separate rooms and worked over by detectives with rolled-up shirtsleeves and advanced degrees in Clinical Psychology. They were threatened with violence. They were bribed with Skittles and Nerds and Newports and meatball subs and money and drugs and everything else. They were begged. They were bargained with. It took hours. It took days. Finally, one after the other, they told the detectives their secrets. “I did it,” said Junior. “I did it,” said Darnell. “I asked them to do it,” said Nikki. And they all went to jail for the rest of their lives. So you see what I mean about the human condition. |
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Martin Slag was born in Philadelphia in 1980 to a large, loving Italian-American family. In 2002 he graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Creative Writing. His first book, a political satire called Battling Green Eyeshades, is forthcoming from Six Gallery Press. He is allergic to dust, pollen, animal dander, and any alcohol that is derived from a potato. He has never been to New York City. |
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Date of Publication: 01 May 2008 |
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