No One Ever
David Antrobus Posted on Tuesday, December 31, 2013 at 1:45AM 
After the party, we all go down by the shivering river.
Winter, cold, but nowhere ice. Kirsten laughs at the richly carved salmon sculptures curled all perfect for the tourists, while live herring gulls circle overhead, warm someplace within their torpedo torsos, and occasionally screaming. Ornery as fuck.
Rafe, one acquisitive eye on the tawdry sub-stripmall liquidation warehouse bargain world outlet stores, at last says this: "Let's go. Find something good. Could we?"
And Lucinda knows she gotta head back south soon enough, cross the stupid dumbfuck border before it gets even stupider with dumbfuck holiday traffic, beat the cheap gasoline and dairy hound dogs, the Costco bandits, Walmart outlaws and Bellis Fair pillagers, and make time and peace with the toothy, chummy, American dumbfuck country mouse. (Here I might point out the green, mostly submerged and peeling boat, not so much offshore as offbank, but there have been many observations throughout our history every bit as profound yet equally and utterly ignored.)
An anticlimax, then.
The real cruelty of life is this, a gathering of negatives: We stumble on the only soul who makes us want to do nothing but sing, only to find that their song is not ours, and never will be.
After which the rains come. And boy, do they come. Gets so the local critters all abandon this place, leave their possible return to fate and the glimmering stars. Bridges, backroads washed out. Nowhere left to ford, all ravelled up in muffled acreages and submerged indeterminacies.
I probably loved Kirsten the most, who always laughed and never succumbed until the very end. She revered things with such lively aplomb. The quiet reserve, the crow score, the chicken-scratch bordello throat-song.
"You'll never follow me all the way," she taunts. And she's right. I went on some tangent, sparking off of the mainstream, reading from some profane backwoods gospel, gleaning banjo pickings in scree-fanned draws, collecting possums and coons a-plenty and hurling them half-assed and wild, aimed mainly potwise, learning their death scents too. Like I learnt her sex scent all along. Her sex scent. Near makes me pause it does.
While Rafe laughs his cynic laugh. Not because he's a cynic but more 'cause he lost all belief in being anything beyond or aside from someone won't do nothin' all that good or ere that bad. Settled for things. Best equipped to hang from the fugitive's neck and chant the death knell requiem. Which may as well be a cynic, I guess, oh lord so jaded and lost.
But Lucinda. The real Lucinda. She will return. Again and again, tires crunching cheap motel parking lot gravel, her serious face levelled athwart a serious plane. She will sit alone, her cold, hard nipples gathered like fat, dry raisins, her elbows jutting chickenwise, her lorn, gone cuntwarmth terrible in its loss and desirous in its recall, she unable to feel her twitching nose or pursing lips, her arid breath a spectre so lonely it makes loneliness itself seem near gravid with joy.
"Love is what I felt back there, and love is where I'm headed," she says, a chastened banshee, heart defiant while eyes downcast.
Rafe sneers. Sucks on what's left of his teeth.
"What the fuck you got to sneer about?" I ask, the first thing I ever said in this furious, chaotic world that ever mattered.
No one ever answers. No one ever. I think about crying and realize I got no tears, and everything moves relentlessly on, even if the world itself stops. Especially then.
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Not even sure why or how, but this post by my awesome friend Dan Mader somehow birthed this piece. Oh, and Faulkner.
Reader Comments (14)
You and Dan overwhelm me with your talent. Wow David. And really, this seems to me to be one of the most important sentences ever read: " Here I point out the green, mostly submerged and peeling boat, not so much offshore as offbank, but there have been many observations throughout our history every bit as profound and utterly ignored."
I look forward to reading this again, in the light of day. Amazing, David.
As always, Jo, I am humbled by your response!
Whoa! I like it. It's got a nice angry beat and an interesting smell, like two days after the night before. If that even makes sense.
So wait, Dan carried and you delivered? How does literary surrogacy work between men?
It's awkward. I don't even know, really. And we probably gave birth to something most people would abort. Ouch. LOL.
But yeah, it's some damn emotional shit, isn't it?
Well, I'm glad you let this one live. Why are people so squeamish about emotions? Anyway, eff 'em. I like it.
That's 'cos you one of the good guys, Jen.
Wow. I just want to roll around in these words.
This is an amazing piece. Bottom line.
This is one of my favorite sentences ever: "I went on some tangent, sparking off of the mainstream, reading from some profane backwoods gospel, gleaning banjo pickings in scree-fanned draws, collecting possums and coons a-plenty and hurling them half-assed and wild, aimed mainly potwise, learning their death scents too."
"The real cruelty of life is this, a gathering of negatives: We stumble on the only soul who makes us want to do nothing but sing, only to find that their song is not ours, and never will be."
That's a hard lesson to learn, but necessary.
You're really Woody Guthrie reincarnated, aren't you?
You people are kind. You know, I'd write these odd things anyway, as they sometimes quietly insist on it, but knowing I have even one single reader helps, it really does. So thank you. And that's now Hunter S. Thompson and Woody Guthrie I've been compared to recently and if I were a little less humble I'd use that as promo! And JC, that part you quote is probably the dead centre heart of whatever's going on here, but Dan, your quote was also my favourite, for the sheer exuberance of the words, all tumbling over each other like a family of raccoons! ;)
Well Daw, I loved the journey through the North American dialect. Curiously, I found myself phonetically tickled by the prose but was ever aware that the word-scape was borne of a titanic struggle with that most terrifying of soul-predators, the Chicken.
I really loved this piece and, as others have already chosen my favourite snapshots, I stand without any thunder to call my own. I also loved Dan's work and will check more of his output.
Were you aware that the name 'Rafe' is very uncool here? I would rather be named Sue or Demi.
Great work mate, like Cormac McCarthy with a broken heart.
Gordon, that makes it better that Rafe is uncool. Sue or Demi, ha ha. So much of this was playing around under the surface that I don't know much of what, why or where other than... exactly, the Chicken and its predations, and maybe the idea of using the rough music of language to beat that scraggly bird to death. Cormac McCarthy with a broken heart! More ammunition for a promotional drive! (Uh, however sarcastic, even articulating that thought makes me want to take a shower for about a week.) Definitely check Dan's work. It's kind of deeply wrong that writing of the calibre he posts to his blog (Unemployed Imagination) is entirely free.
Hey, I liked the quote I chose too! lol :)) Actually, let's face it, David. The story has beautifully realized, quotable lines throughout. :))
Thanks again, Jo. I'm learning!