Writers on the Storm
by
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Tonight
Tonight I sent my wife to do a man’s job and I feel really sh---y about it.
Y’see, Myra found out last weekend my partner in the business was stealing from it. From us. We own a mobile home relocation and asset recovery business. In other words, we got a couple of tow trucks, and if you need your trailer moved or a repo done, we can do it. No, we don’t do towing for flats or busted engines, that’s for the big boys. We can’t compete. Ross’s Wrecker has all that business. They got a fleet of trucks and the backing of old money. But, I can move a trailer in nothing flat. And, there ain’t nothing better than the rush of grabbing some dude’s Corvette outta his driveway at midnight ‘cause the bank or finance company said to.
Anyway, Myra was going over the books last week and found what she called a discrepancy. She set right there on the sofa and told me the business was about ten thousand bucks short of where it ought to be. Now I never have got rich from this thing, but we eat, y’know? The kids don’t go hungry, we get to go on vacation once a year down to Myrtle Beach (even staying at the Yachtsman every two years), and our cars are paid for even if they ain’t new. We eat, y’know?
But when she plainly said to me that she thought Al was stealing, well, I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it.
Y’see, Al and me, we’re old friends from when we was ten years old and they mixed the junior high schools together. He was from over Sweetwater way, and me, I’m from the northeast side of town. Both were poor parts of town, but we didn’t know it. Nobody knew they was poor then. We just knew we was free. No Little League, no Boy Scouts. Poor people didn’t take part in them things. It’s only now people know they’re poor when somebody tells ‘em. Like other kids at school, when they tease my two.
Well, Al and me, we really hit it off and grew up together, Frick and Frack, they called us. We got drunk together, stoned together, got in fights together, got the sh-- beat out of us together, and got throwed in jail together. Hell, one night in May ’79, we got laid at the same time in Rooms 310 and 312 at Mackie’s Motel in Conover. Al had Tamara Todd and I had Pam Martin. Both them girls was drunk and slept through most of the five minutes it took, but me and Al never told anybody else that. To us, it was the beginning of our lives and me and Al knew we was tied together forever. Hell, I was there when his folks died in ’83 and he was there when my mom passed. We were each other’s best man, and we were the first at each other’s children’s births. He’s held my girls and me his boys. Dammit, there ain’t no way what Myra said is true.
Myra ain’t never really liked Al, anyway. She banned him from the house for a while right after we got married ‘cause he was always coming over and him and me was getting drunk. We’d set up all night in the living room, picking guitars and laughing, being loud. Solving the world’s problems and causing new ones. Myra worked at her family’s restaurant and had to get up early so she was always in the bed early, but me, hell, I could go all night then. As I think back on it now, Myra maybe resented this, but if she did, she never said nothing. Or, maybe it’s just me feeling guilty.
But the real trouble between Myra and Al (Myra won’t go to his house now at all) started a couple summers ago. Y’see, she got in a fuss with his wife, Trina, that never has really calmed down. We were eating barbecue at their place on a Saturday when Trina made some kind of comment (and I ain’t, to this day, sure what was said) about Myra’s ass. Something about it’s size. Now, Myra ain’t a small woman. God knows, two kids and twenty years’ll do some damage to the female form, but Myra ain’t ugly. In fact, when we started dating in ’81, Al said she was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And that was while he was dating Sandy Tallent, a blonde, blue-eyed, trailer whore from over Claremont way. Al said Sandy could suck the varnish off a table leg. Sandy was pretty then, too. I seen her the other day at the Winn Dixie. She looked rough, like her own varnish was worn off.
Trina came about ’85 or so. She and Al met right after the business got up and running. Al and me were in debt about ten thousand apiece for the first truck, and Trina worked at the loan office in the credit bureau where we got the loan. Al was unattached at the time. Sandy had been the first of three women (Al went through them for awhile like a fat man at the all-you-can-eat at Shoney’s), and he and Trina just kind of hit it off. I noticed right away he was took with her real bad. The way he looked at her and the way he looked even when she wasn’t around. But she came with a price tag. She was then, and is now, the most expensive woman I ever seen. Myra said right off that Trina was a high-priced piece of ass. Every date we went on with them two, Trina had to go to the most expensive steak houses to eat, either The Sizzlin’ or Western Beef. Trina made Al take her to the theater, not the movie theater, but the real, live theater, where local folks act in plays. I kept telling Al they sooner or later make movies out of every one of them. Anyway, it cost ten bucks to get in there, to see them live things, but only three to see the movie at the Carolina. Rocking chair seats, too. Myra wouldn’t ever go to them live shows. She said it was too much money to see the city council rich act like poor people in some queer’s play from New York. Myra is smart like that. Me, I just never liked the way them live theaters always smelled. All old and musty and stuck up, and no popcorn.
Something else. When we bought our first little house in ’87, Myra and me was happy just to get some walls and a roof. When Al and Trina went house hunting, they had to get brick with a fancy two-car garage. This place was like a palace, with a room just for the dining table. In fact, Trina had two tables. One was in what she called her breakfast nook, and the other one was a big fancy mahogany job in that dining room. Myra always laughed about that breakfast nook. She was always asking Al if he and Trina enjoyed eating breakfast nookie in there.
This place was also equipped with five bedrooms and an attic you could stand up in. I asked Al if he could afford it, and he said not to worry. In a few years, him and me would have a fleet of trucks and would be bringing in six figures easy. Apiece. Myra kind of got all jealous over Al and Trina’s place and started bitching at me for a bigger place. I just told her I was happy here in my three bedroom, and why did she want a bigger place to clean anyway? Sh--, I told her, in a few years, we’ll have this place paid for, and Al and Trina’ll still be paying house payments ‘til Jesus comes back. Anyway, who wants to dust and clean all them carpets and all that old furniture? Myra said she was happy she’d married a man with smarts. I think Myra’s the one who’s smart.
Well, now I wonder who’s been smart and who’s been stupid.
- Excerpt from Tonight by Robert Canipe
"It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough."
-Walt Whitman
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About the Book
In Writers on the Storm, Robert Canipe, Carter Monroe, and Tim Peeler, a trio of North Carolina authors, merge their unique and often powerful tales and observations into a coherent vision of the contemporary suburban South. Readers will recognize themselves, their families, their friends, or neighbors in the unsettlingly familiar characters that populate both the fiction and non-fiction to be found in these pages. Canipe tightropes his narratives across the violent, often deathly chasms that separate great courage from inevitable heartbreak. Monroe assumes the ever-analytical persona, trying desperately to make sense of the nonsensical, to glean the rare, joyous gifts that nevertheless present themselves to this provincial archetype. Peeler salutes the wisdom of the self-educated and champions a local history that he believes must not be forgotten. Writers on the Storm demonstrates again that it is "place" that often shapes the observer as well as the observed. These stories and essays reveal an open-eyed sense of wonder that leads both writer and reader to the peace and self-discovery that waits at the conclusion of this storm.
About the Author
Robert Canipe writes short stories and novels, collects books, music, and dust, all in Hickory, North Carolina. This happiness is shared by his wife Ann, his daughter Kristina, and a cat named Fuzzy Bastard. Robert is currently at work on several projects, including two novels, a book of poetry, and another collection of short stories. Carter Monroe lives, works, and writes in the provinces. His novel, Journey, is currently available at amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. A chapbook of his poetry, Sittin’ in with the Sun, is scheduled for publication by Rank Stranger Press in Fall 2001. Tim Peeler has two books of poems from McFarland & Co.: Touching all the Bases (1999) and Waiting for Godot’s First Pitch (2001), both available at mcfarlandpub.com. He has edited and published Third Lung Review since 1985 and teaches English at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, North Carolina.