Board footer

jamester

 Rep: 84 

Re: Duff McKagan Try, a Short Story on Reverb

jamester wrote:

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2 … f_mcka.php
Duff McKagan
Try, a Short Story By Duff McKagan
By Duff McKagan, Thu., Mar. 24 2011 @ 9:02AM
Comments (5)
Categories: Duff McKagan

I have yet to write a fictional short story for Seattle Weekly. But in my quest for new and interesting ways to engage readers, I thought it would be sort of different to start a story, and see where it leads. I never know ahead of time what might come out when I write from week-to-week, and my editor, Chris Kornelis, encouraged this latest idea. If some of you want to take a stab at trying to add to this piece, please do.

* * * * *
She sensed that this was the point . . . the very stark moment that she had lost him. He hadn't come home for three days. The sheriff had stopped coming by to check for news.

His drunken yet cheerful voice gone--a drunk who was dampening down his intellect from the outside world--James was too smart for this place and its noise.

James had crossed the river bridge to the other side of town, a crossing he made to escape into a seedier life. It was a place where few would inquire about his intentions in this life, where no one cared what he was going to do with all of his credentials and intellect. No, the people on this side of the tracks would leave him be with his drink; unquestioned and intoxicated.

He would bring extra bottles over that river bridge, and sometimes buy folks at the bar a shot of their poison. He had no interest in making friends. But he knew this was the kind of favor that kept a mouth from wagging. The locals obliged, and the sight of James passed out in the gutter, or in the corner of the last watering hole of his evening, was met without even a whisper.

His liver would not work so well anymore, and his kidneys rebelled--causing his back to ache when he pissed. When the chance came to puke, and there was scant booze around, James would drink back up the fleeing fluid from his belly. He convinced himself that made sense.

Melanie wanted James to change his ways. To redirect his downward spiral into an abyss that would surely end with an early grave. Melanie knew James long before the problem had grown this bad. Sure, he drank then too--but not with the bad intention that it now had. He loved her, there was no doubt of that. But he couldn't say the same about himself. All that everyone else had expected of him was never attained. And he never wanted it. Ever. Any of it.

James was once a good-looking man, and he and Melanie were a couple whom others envied. They had the world in their back pocket, and youth was rarely better served. Melanie kept her beauty, but lines now appeared prematurely on her face, and her neck was habitually arched forward from worry and stress and heartache. James hated himself even more for this fact.

He had tried to quit many times. The shakes and panic would come in waves when he tried. His bowels would loosen and his skin would crawl as if a fire lay just beneath the surface. He had no one to go to for help. By now all of his friends had either died from the sickness or moved far, far away. Melanie and James had no family that they knew of. They were alone. He was alone. She was alone. They never thought that it would get this far. Those who had expected so much of James early on had long since abandoned all hope and fellowship.

They tried everything. In those days, a doctor would simply suggest sending James to an institution for the mentally infirm. James would not. Melanie too tried with the traveling salesmen of potions and medicinal elixirs. They, in their one-horse-drawn buggy, with gaudy signs telling of "cure-alls" and opium for "frontier boredom" and sunburn.

Melanie was a good customer, and salesmen sought her out. They kept coming well after James had given up on their snake oil.

The footbridge across the river was new. On one side lay the fertile fruit-crop fields fed by melted snow from the mountains 20 miles west. But on the east side of the river, the desert crept all the way to its edge, choking all hope of a crop or shade. It was a good place to put all of the saloons that were recently banned by the civic community in the west-side town of Natachee. The saloons were the perfect place for James to push back on his gift. He was too smart for this life, his mind and soul were just too aware of the dark things that man was capable of. He felt he could no longer do anything to protect Melanie from the evils.

Melanie slept with another man just after she and James were married; just after she lost her baby in its second term; just after they had to cut her inside, to save her life, but ending her ability to ever give one again herself.

James didn't give up. He said there were plenty of babies that they could give a home to, babies whose parents had perished in a mountain pass crossing, perhaps, or the unmentionable, a baby whose mother had become pregnant out of wedlock. Shame was too oppressive back then.

But Melanie couldn't bring herself to think of not having a baby of her own. And by the time the idea did start to come around to her, James was too far gone.

James kept thinking of the story his mother used to tell him as a child about a frog who lived at the bottom of a well. The frog was so very happy with life, what with plenty of water, just enough bugs, and a little bit of sunlight each day. A few times a day, a bucket would come down, but other than that, life was divine for this frog. But one day he was scooped up by this bucket. When he got to the top, the frog was dumped out gently onto the ground. "Oh, my!" said the frog. He did not realize that up here there was sunshine ALL the day long, and more bugs than he could ever want, and other frogs to talk with.

James crossed the river again to the east.

She would mutter to herself until she was hoarse: "Try, James. Try. Try. Just try," until she cried herself to sleep.

A frog croaked out in the moonlight. Tomorrow there could be sun. If it is not too late.