JJ

Shaboo

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments

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JJ surveyed the room from the tavern entrance. Square bar in the middle, full tables all around. TVs showing baseball playoffs and college football. A cozy Fall buzz in the room, chilly outside, warm inside. Saturday night. A good feeling for most, but this was not what JJ had in mind. The conviviality was toxic. He turned to leave.

“Jason!”

JJ looked to his left and there in the corner was a large hairy figure with a semi-familiar sideways leaning posture and a twinkle in the eye. Holy shit, was that Shaboo? He said the name. “Shaboo?”

“As I live and fuckin’ breathe. Get over here and sit down,” Shaboo bellowed and several people turned to behold the beast and its prey.

“Quiet down, Shabby Boo,” someone yelled and several people at the bar laughed.

“They tolerate me here,” Shaboo said as he took JJ in an immense embrace. Shaboo’s flannel smelled of cut wood and mammal. He was a head taller than JJ and beamed down at him. He shepherded JJ to the corner table where books were stacked next to an open laptop. The top book was, “Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution”. Shaboo noticed JJ noticing. “I write in here sometimes,” he said. “Gets me out of my dank cave. There are actual folks in here.”

JJ had a strange feeling of interruption, of something happening of which he had not, could not, account for in his FUCK-IT! plan of self-destruction. He did not, could not, resist. Shaboo was a college friend and a force of nature. JJ knew he lived in the Berkshires but hadn’t thought of him in years. If he did think of him, it was with a smile at some old capers and a twinge of envy. Shaboo had published two pretty good novels. That twinge of envy would be full-on hatred if it was anyone but Shaboo. JJ hated earned success, especially writerly success.

“Shaboo. It’s like you appeared just for me.”

“You want anything?”

JJ thought of his original intent. The imperiousness of his urge to get completely wasted was starting to dissolve a little in the presence of Shaboo. “Just, um…Just, no. I can’t drink.”

“Well, shit, that’s alright. Mind if I get another Guinness, though?” He gestured to a waitress. “It’s so funny, I was just thinking of you.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, that writer’s workshop we took. Remember old Fontenblach? What a piece of shit!” Shaboo laughed. The waitress appeared with a pint for Shaboo and looked at JJ.

“Just…just a ginger ale.”

“Are you still writing?”

“Not really.”

“Why the hell not?”

What was he supposed to say? That he had drifted aimlessly? That he had moved back home to find himself and had won the lottery instead? That he had taken a drunken money bath? That nothing filled the oozing hole in his soul?

“I bought a farm,” he said.

“Holy shit! So you’re a farmer?”

“It’s not that type of farm. Listen, I’m kind of in trouble here.”

“I could kind of tell that.” He took a deep foamy swallow of his pint and leaned in. “Shaboo is listening.”

JJ started talking.

It Can Go Either Way

/ David Ferland / 3 Comments

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Carl didn’t know what to think. The messages were all wrong but he didn’t think he was misreading them. By all indications, Lila and JJ weren’t clicking and hadn’t been for awhile. Too much time together on their road trip, too much history. Maybe they had never clicked. There were reasons why they could never stick together. But he, Carl, was clicking with Lila. He knew it. Lila knew it. And JJ knew it, but didn’t seem to care. In fact, JJ seemed strangely expansive after being shamed by the guards at the art museum. Something was amiss, but Carl would just step back and let it happen. One thing about being friends with these two- they were going to do what they were going to do and there was nothing you could do about it. So, he sat back in a comfy chair in a comfy suite in a quaint and comfy Berkshires hotel watching playoff baseball on the tube and ignoring the whispered conversation coming from the bedroom.

The game, Mets vs. Cubs, two mostly hapless teams, one with sporadic success (Mets), the other with occasional glimpses of mediocrity (Cubs). The Cubs’ stars are an intensely bearded pitcher and an ivy-covered stadium filled with frat boys and tourists. But, they were good this year and baseball geeks were all in a tizzy about the Cubs maybe getting to the World Series. Joe Buck is on the broadcast. There’s a guy, growing up, who was never told he wasn’t funny and adorable. Hence, he has grown insufferable and obnoxious, incredibly pleased with himself. Carl hated him.

The Mets had two men on and the shortstop, Flores, who looked like a sheepish teenager, was coming up to bat.

Joe Buck: “To think he was almost traded at the deadline. He cried when he thought he was traded.”

Harold Reynolds: “And he’s produced for the Mets, stepping up after Tejada was injured.”

Buck: “And here he is, with a chance to be a New York hero.”

Reynolds: “Not as good a fielder as Tejada…”

Buck: “The Mets are the only team he’s known, and now he can make the near-trade a laughable memory, turning those tears to joy.”

Reynolds: “I expect Strop to bust him inside. He’s been much too comfortable up there.”

Buck: “After being nearly traded, it’s an honor to be busted inside with a chance to go to the World Series.  The crying is in the past.”

Flores flew out to end the inning.

An inning later JJ came out of the bedroom. “I’m headed out for a bit. Do you need anything?”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

Carl and JJ just looked at each other and the moment hung there, something passing between them, an understanding of what might happen if JJ walked out the door. Lila was still in the bedroom, a presence unseen, the crux of the matter.

“Don’t go,” Carl said. “Watch the game with me. Or, go to a meeting.”

JJ hesitated, looking toward the TV. “That’s none of your business.”

“Please don’t drink,” Carl said.

“Please, don’t sleep with Lila,” JJ said and left.

In the end, they both did what had to be done.

(The Mets went on to the World Series, only to be destroyed by the Kansas City Royals. Flores, the shortstop, hit .059.)

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1

/ David Ferland / 3 Comments

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Carl caught up with them in the Berkshires. Lila wanted to see some art and JJ, not crazy about art, just wanted a change of scenery. They went from the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont to the old people and snobby New Yorkers in Williamstown. JJ watched them with growing ire.

“Yeah, we’ve been staying at JJ’s,” Carl said.

JJ tuned in to the catch-up-on-the-news chatter. “Both of you?”

“Yeah. She’s house sitting for you right now.”

“So, you’re back together?” Lila, JJ noticed, seemed less than thrilled by the news of Anne’s return into Carl’s life. Or, she was less than thrilled by Carl’s apparent happiness over this development.

“The change of scenery helps. Who knows when the novelty wears off? But the sex…” Here Carl pounded his fist into his other hand, repeatedly. “Let’s just say that my cup runneth over.”

“We can do without the visuals,” Lila said.

“Are you guys in my bed,” JJ asked.

“Speaking of visuals,” Carl said. “This Whistler’s Mother is completely overrated. It’s just a painting of his old mother. Why all the hubbub?”

Lila said, “The image has been co-opted throughout the years as an example of the good old American values of hearth and home.”

“And stern old ladies,” Carl said.

“They used it to sell war bonds! It’s a good example of, once you put it out there, it’s not yours anymore.”

“Meaning, it doesn’t matter what the artist meant, or didn’t mean. Shit, it could just be a very good painting of his mother. But, once it’s out there, it’s open season for interpretation.”

“And he insisted it meant nothing,” Lila said. “It was just a painting of his mother and should be appreciated as such.”

“Poor naïve Whistler,” Carl said.

“Right?”

JJ had slipped back into the antechamber with the painting. He wanted another look for himself and couldn’t stand art talk. Lila took one art history class years ago and she was a goddamn expert. And Carl. Carl would hold forth on any topic like he wasn’t a bagel baker with a shitty marriage. JJ stood behind some people seated on a bench and beheld Whistler’s Mother. There was a certain…dignity? Austerity? He didn’t know the word but there was a power there. What made a painting into art? Why do some paintings make the leap and some remain flat and lifeless? JJ didn’t know. But, this Whistler’s Mother felt like art. He took his phone out and got a couple pictures before a guard appeared at his elbow.

“Sir, no pictures,” she said and touched his camera arm. Simultaneously, an older guard standing near the painting added to the whole room, “No pictures allowed, folks.”

Several people glanced at JJ and looked away as if not wanting to stare at a facial deformity. They were too polite to cluck their tongues but they didn’t need to. The room was thick with the disapproval of this uncouth nincompoop. Whistler’s Mother just sat there, placidly disappointed, like a sour parent whose kid has taken up facial piercings. JJ slunk away to the hall.

“I got a picture of her,” he said to Lila and Carl.

“You can’t do that,” Lila said. “That’s like stealing.”

“I think it’s bad for the painting,” Carl said.

JJ walked past and kept going down the hall. He felt like a heel, sick with exposure to the world of nature and people. His closest friends, his girlfriend(!), were conspiring with museum guards to make him raw and frustrated. Inviting Carl had been a bad idea. The trip itself had been a bad idea. They couldn’t even get out of New England! Not even two months into his grand road trip across the USA and he felt like guzzling a quart of Jack Daniels. His mouth watered and he froze. A new determination came to life in his gut and head. He stared into the distance as people moved around him like they moved around a pillar. Then he turned back, poker-faced, to subtly speed their departure. Cooperation, for the time being, was crucial to his new plan.

“Let’s get a suite at the nicest place in town. With the lottery money,” he said, to stop the polite protests.

“I thought you were mad,” Lila said.

“Nope,” JJ said. “I just want to get out of here.”

“Agreed,” Carl said.

They all smiled and linked arms, the best of friends, and headed to the parking lot.

Whistler’s Mother? She couldn’t care less.

Swamp or Bog?

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

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Lila asked, “What’s the difference between a bog and a swamp?”

“No idea. Standing water in a swamp?” JJ peered out over the cattails from beneath the brim of his cap. Early afternoon in sticky late summer.

They lounged under a tree on dry ground above a bog in New Hampshire. Or was it a swamp? It smelled like a swamp. But, everything below the mountain ridges smelled swampy and fetid in the humidity. The shade was good, especially if you stayed still. Dragonflies hovered and darted, like technicolor futuristic bi-planes. JJ thought dragonflies to be living proof of God. What a creature! Of course, God also created the mosquito, so hold the applause.

“That sounds right. Standing water. Pools of water in a swamp. Spongy ground in a bog.”

“Either way, it’s nice to be up here above it all. High and dry.”

“High and dry,” she murmured and dozed off into a boggy half-sleep. A murky continuing of a dream from the night before. A variation on the chasing dream. She is being pursued through a mazelike series of scenes from her life. A camp where she used to be a teenage counselor. She hurried through the arts and crafts cabin and overturned a bin of perfect oak leaves for tracing and art projects, and felt a surge of sadness. Then she was in Boston from her college days, pushing through tourists at the public gardens and disrupting wedding pictures on the bridge above the swan boats. The wedding party all looked at her without expression as she rushed through. She fled the gardens and emerged on a street in Paris, where she always wanted to go but had never been. She somehow found a bike and sped down the Champs Elysees like a figure in an Impressionist painting, more panicked now because she speak French at all. Weren’t they snotty if you couldn’t speak French?The-Champs-Elysees-Paris-xx-Georges-Stein

Who was the pursuer? Who wouldn’t just leave her alone? She never got a clear look. Sometimes she would turn and just get a glimpse of a figure wearing a dark hoody walking after her, unhurried and relentless, not concerned at all that she could get away, biding his time until she tired and fell or just stopped.

“Lila.”

Paris broke up, her dream bike wobbled, the image faded, the fear remaining.

“Lila,” JJ whispered and shook her shoulder.

“Hmmm?”

“Let’s get moving. We have to do another 5 miles before dark.”

Oh yeah, backpacking in the heat, in New Hampshire.

“You know,” she said. “Let’s go ahead and invite Carl for a few days.”

JJ was quiet. “I thought we decided about this.”

“I know, but he was really weird when we called the house. That tornado…a close call…”

JJ sighed. “Okay. I guess it’s the right thing to do. Especially with his marriage all messed up again.”

“We’ll call when we get back tomorrow.” Don’t seem too eager, she told herself.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

“You go ahead,” Lila said. “I’ll follow you.”

“Ha,” JJ snorted. “I’ve been following you since yesterday.”

“My turn to chase you,” she said and hoisted her pack.

“Who’s chasing anyone,” JJ said and hoisted his own.

Unease in Maine

/ David Ferland / 5 Comments

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JJ watched the fire, the pulsating red coals down in there, below the wood. Camping in Maine on the road trip with Lila. A beautiful night, high fifties, perfect weather for this perfect campfire after a sun soaked day. Stars out, not a cloud in the sky.

JJ was uneasy.

In fact he was downright irritable. Earlier, he had watched Lila as she ate a lobster. (Not Lobstah! JJ saw the t-shirts. People who bought a t-shirt with the word “Lobstah” on it? Morons.) JJ looked at Lila as Lila gazed at the picturesque Maine harbor. Revulsion at her chewing. He noticed the age in her face, the lines around her eyes, and the way her throat moved when she swallowed. He watched her crack the shell of the poor little prehistoric monster on her plate, her fingers dripping with butter. She was really enjoying herself! All that moist ripping and relishing of juices. Brutal! Who the hell was this woman?

“Eat it, JJ,” she said. “Just do it.”

He had started to. And the tail meat was good. Except there was this brown goop that clung where the tail met the body, soiling the nice white meat. It was persistent, the clinging of this brown goop. It wouldn’t rinse away and it just smeared when he tried to flick it off. He couldn’t ignore that. Shit? Guts? Brown effluvium from any body; crustacean, mammal, or other; should never be eaten. Seriously.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It all tastes like the sea.”

But he couldn’t eat any more of it and she shook her head as if he had left his cap on during the national anthem.

And now in front of their perfect campfire on this perfect evening he couldn’t shake that peevish feeling. What’s the big deal? Except that Lila had moved on and was toasting a marshmallow with the focus of a chef working some delicate morsel over the flame. The tip of her tongue stuck out in concentration and the light gave her face a glow and god, yes, she was beautiful. It just annoyed and shamed him all over again.

He got his own stick, impaled a marshmallow, and shoved it into the flames. The mallow caught fire and sizzled as the flame worked around it, leaving a black flaky shell.

“JJ!” she said.

“That’s the way I like it.”

“Okay,” she said. “Look at mine.” She showed him the golden swollen orb on the stick. She put her head back and dramatically lowered the mallow into her open mouth like an eager fire eater. She closed her mouth and removed the stick, molten white mallow coating the point, and she moaned with delight. She savored, smiled, and then said, “You’re going to have a hard time matching up with that tonight.”

To JJ, she looked grotesque in the firelight, like some ravenous wood goddess devouring bits of men as they were forced to watch. “I’m going for a walk,” JJ said and started away into the dark.

“That’s my last try tonight,” Lila said and threw the stick toward the fire. It clattered on the fire ring and bounced away. “Come back when you’re done being a dick.”

“It might be awhile.”

“That’s fine.”

He walked away from the firelight and was fully wrapped in the dark.