JJ in the 21st Century

Fiscal Cliff

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

“I think we’re headed off the fiscal cliff,” Betty said.
“I know,” said JJ.  “That’s all you hear about.”
“No, I mean we.  I mean us, me and Barry”
“I want to write a story about a guy named Clifford who handles people’s money, tells them how to spend,” JJ said.  “People would call him Fiscal Cliff.”
“This is serious,” Betty said.  “Everything’s a big fuckin joke to you.”
JJ looked around the coffee place.  Mid-morning in mid-December.  A few college kids with laptops, a few twenty-somethings with laptops, and a group of young moms holding babies at a big table, three of them clustered around a laptop.  JJ did a quick count:  six Apples, three Other. A newer Bruce Springsteen song was playing, his voice strangely polished but buried in the music.
“I thought you guys had a lot of stocks,” JJ said to his sister.  “Barry’s always talking about his Google, his Apple, his tech…”
“Barry’s full of shit.”
“Plus you got that house on the Cape.”
Betty looked away.  She got the look that JJ called her “Camel Trader Look” and he could see his kid sister, years ago, thinking of the best way to get $20 from their mom.  Now, in her late thirties, Betty’s cunning could not hide an impatient desperation.
“Look,” Betty said and turned back to JJ.  “I don’t want to get into it but it’s not what it seems.”
“Go on.”
“Look at how fuckin smug you are,” she said.  One of the moms glanced over.  “You won all that money and now you sit there like some fuckin Don.”
“It wasn’t as much money as you think.”
“It was the fuckin Lotto!”
“We’ve been down this road…”
“What are you doing with your life, JJ?”   Betty stood and gathered her coat and purse.  “You sit there all alone and judge me and Barry from your fuckin perch.”
“I gave you…”
“You’ve always been the lucky one, JJ,” she said and stomped away.  JJ saw all the moms turn their baby bundles away from Betty as she rushed past, a mom’s instinct to place herself between baby and bitterness.
“I don’t feel lucky,” JJ muttered.  He finished his coffee and Bruce sang, “Is there anybody alive out there?”

"The Patriots are the Dick Cheney of Football"

/ David Ferland / Leave a comment

     “The Patriots suck,” JJ said as they watched them score another touchdown against the beleaguered Dolphins.  Carl clapped and whooped.  Pale December sunshine slanted into JJ’s house.  Sunday afternoon and Carl was approaching a month in JJ’s living room.
“If by suck you mean they’re awesome then I agree,” Carl said.  He was beaming as they lined up for the extra point.  “If by suck you mean they dominate then I agree.”  Carl adjusted himself in his nest of pillow and blankets on JJ’s couch.
“I mean what they stand for.  It sucks,” JJ said.
“What they stand for?  What the fuck does that mean?  They stand for winning.”
“The Patriots are the Dick Cheney of football.”
“Here we go,” Carl said. The extra point was good and he leaned back into JJ’s sofa as an ad for Geico came on.
“The Patriots have that smugness.  Like they invented the game and everyone else is too stupid to get it.”
“Go ahead, let it out,” Carl said soothingly.
“They treat football like it’s a state secret or something.  They answer questions with this tolerant smirk…”
“Don’t forget the cheating,” Carl said.
“I’m getting to that.  They haven’t won shit since…”
“I’ll tell you what sucks,” Carl said.  “The Dolphins playing Jimmy Buffet during kickoffs.  That strikes terror into the opposition.”  Somewhere in a forest of long neck beer bottles a cell phone buzzed on the coffee table.  “Aw shit, here we go,” he said looking at the phone screen.
“Don’t answer,” JJ said.
“What,” Carl said into the phone and listened with a grimace.  The commercials were ending when Carl said, “I’ll come home when I feel like it.”  Then he hung up and turned the phone off.  The Patriots kicked off to the Dolphins to the strains of Jimmy Buffet’s “Fins”.  Sunlight, real Florida sunlight, bathed the field in Miami.

Gray Thursday

/ David Ferland / Leave a comment


     “Corn Hill,” Barry said and pointed to a prominent mound rising along the Bay side of Cape Cod.  Summer homes clung to slopes.  “That’s where the Pilgrims first stole from the Indians.” 
       “No shit?” asked JJ.
       “I thought you might like that.  Can you guess what they stole?”
       JJ looked at his sister’s husband for signs of humor or trickery but Barry was looking intently at Corn Hill.  “Corn?”
       “Yes, exactly,” Barry said.  “They felt they had no choice.  Miles Standish led a group to this spot and found corn buried in the sand.”
       “Was there butter and salt too,” JJ asked.
       Barry looked at him and nodded slightly as if confirming a mild suspicion.  “It was a dire situation.  Look over yonder,” Barry said and they turned toward the Bay.  It was low tide under a gray November sky.  JJ saw mud flats extend from the shore and ease into the choppy water of Cape Cod Bay.  Some of the waves had white caps but the air was still where they stood.  He could see the whole curve of the Cape from left to right and the phallic Pilgrim monument jutting from the center of Provincetown at the very tip.
       “Those mudflats were a problem for the Pilgrims,” Barry said.  “They longed to get to shore but had to slog through a quarter mile of low tide in November to reach it.”
       “So they could steal from the Indians,” JJ said.
       “The natives weren’t saints,” Barry said. He looked at JJ and cocked his head.  “Are we going to start rehashing the sins of the White Man?”
       JJ looked out at the Bay and the breeze picked up, cold and heavy, promising rain.  He thought of the coming meal.  He thought of this family that had taken pity on him for Thanksgiving.  His sister had foisted him on Barry and Barry’s parents.  JJ had heard her whisper to Barry, like a lawyer and client with heads together at the defendant’s table, “just take a ride.  Go bond.  Look at the sights.”
       “Listen Barry,” JJ said.  “I know you don’t want me here.  And I don’t really want to be here.  We’re putting on a little charade for my sister.  And the fuckin Pilgrims went over to Plymouth and found villages decimated by disease brought by other Euros.  They took this as a sign that they were meant to be there.  And the Indians started playing them off against their rivals.  Massasoit had his own problems. And all things considered they did pretty well for a bunch of intolerant utopians in hostile wilderness.  Shit, they managed to survive!”
     Barry turned away and looked at the water.  “So how do we make it through the next two days?”
       JJ turned and started walking back to the car.  “Let’s go eat some fuckin bird.”
       “And have a drink,” Barry said and followed. 

Good Pilgrim and Indian History

JJ Votes for President

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments
JJ stood in line to vote for the President of the United States.  There were about fifty people there and the polls were about to open.  His phone buzzed.  “It’s 7:00 AM, man, what the fuck,” he said.  The old guy nearby looked at him.
                “You’re awake,” Carl said.
                “I’m in line, waiting to vote.”
                “Oh yeah,” said Carl.  “Listen.  I’m sleepin on the couch.  I’m gonna leave tonight but I can’t go to my mom’s.”
                A voice boomed from the front of the line, “The Registrar of Voters from ____shire County proclaims the polls for Precinct 5 open!”  There was a smattering of 7:00 AM applause and people began to shuffle forward.
                “I know she’s fuckin him.  I just know it.  That little shit won’t even look me in the eye.  I just know it,” Carl was saying.
                “Listen,” JJ said.  “I can’t really talk.  I gotta vote…”  He was nearing the entrance to the cafeteria.
                “I can’t stay with my mom.  It’s fuckin demeaning.  I can’t stay here.  I’ll fuckin stab her or something…”
                “Listen,”  JJ said as he turned the corner into the cafeteria.  “I can’t talk.  I’m going in now.  To vote.”
                “I can’t stay here and I can’t go there.  Do you fuckin hear me?”
                “Sir!,” a voice boomed.  It was the Registrar of voters from _____shire County.  “No phones in the polling place.”
                “Gotta go,” JJ said.
                “…your place,” Carl was saying when JJ hung up.
                JJ gave them his address and name and they gave him a ballot.  He walked to the little desk with blinders.  He cast his vote for President of the United States of America and looked around the room at the earnest citizens hunched over their own ballots filling in the ovals with vigor and concentration.  He looked over the rest of the ballot.  The Registrars, Representatives, Council Members, Sheriffs, and Senators didn’t move him, though he paused at a familiar name.  A vaguely unpleasant sensation, like seeing a remarkably large road kill, maybe a fat possum, passed through him.  Yes, that was the guy with the nanny…no…he was the one who said something about rape…maybe…didn’t he have a Nazi father?   Oh, fuck it.  JJ just took the ballot to the checkout desk.
                “You’re the third voter from the precinct,” the lady said as she crossed off his name.
                “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it,” JJ said.
                She frowned and pointed.  “Insert the ballot into that machine.”
                The man in front of JJ was having a hard time getting the machine to accept his ballot.  He had a stained coat and gray hair matted on one side of his head.  “The machines…these machines,” he groaned.  “Hey,” he yelled.  “Can I get a person over here?”  Then, turning to JJ, “This fucking machine.”  The machine looked suspiciously like a paper shredder. 
                The man got his ballot in and JJ inserted his own.  He took an “I voted” sticker from a plastic bowl next to the door and headed out.  The line had grown.  “This is a big election,” JJ thought and his phone buzzed.  A text from Carl.
                “jj pls help need a bed”
                JJ sighed and walked into the November morning.  People with their campaign signs had arrived and stood just beyond a cordon of police tape.  It was cold and most held a sign in one gloved hand and a coffee in the other.  As JJ walked against the flow of arriving voters, his phone buzzed again, a call this time.  He answered and said, with a sense of duty and a sinking heart, “Just for tonight, Carl.”