Townie Derrick wakes up. The hangover clings to his skull, his heart, which seems like it’s barely working this morning as he rolls off of Tim’s couch and searches wildly around the living room for that glass of water he could have sworn he filled, set beside his sleeping place for when he woke up. This common, quick sense, even when he’s shitfaced, kicks in sometimes and he almost feels good about himself. But if he doesn’t quench that demanding thirst now his tongue could dry up. Maybe his eyes too. Everything on the face is connected. He learned that in high school when he had an earache that gave him migraines for a month.
What would you rather, he thinks now as the ache in his skull expands. An earache or a headache? Derrick works for Adam’s General Store. Tim works for Landy Construction. Kevin, for his dad’s car dealership. Their jobs fucking suck. But like most Americans stuck in the 9-5 vortex, their weekends don’t and drinking has become a second job. On Friday nights they start at The Harp, then move to Cleary’s after ten when the jukebox is free. Everyone is drunk by then and eventually they get a hold of some girls. Usually locals. One time, the best time, Derrick took Amanda Thatcher back to Tim’s.
Beautiful girl. Big green eyes. Crazy curly hair, so sexy. One of the smartest in his class when they were in high school. They fucked twice on Tim’s couch, but the first time, he thought, This is making love. Am I in love? But a few weekends later, at The Harp, she was all over Tim. Whispering things in his ear. Pressing her perky tits onto Tim’s chest like it was some mistake as she tried to squeeze past him. When he sunk onto Tim’s couch later, he heard them in the next room. The same moans Derrick made escape Amanda’s perfect mouth before. He wondered if he should be pissed.
His drunkenness made him think so as he lay on the couch, the room spinning, their moans echoing, that feeling of worthlessness eating away at his soul. In the morning Tim came out in his boxers with his limp dick almost slipping out of the hole and slapped him awake. Derrick opened his eyes and saw his best friend since second grade. A big, freaky grin took up his entire face. They had shared something. Tim seemed happy about this so how could he be angry? When he walks into the kitchen now, Kevin and Tim shuffle around the room like dogs waiting for a morning walk.
Tim drinks a glass of orange juice. Kevin that water he was looking for earlier. It is summer and he knows they have plans for fishing, maybe cliff jumping at Shem River. You look like shit, Tim says as he holds a sip of juice in his mouth, the sound of his voice garbled. I feel like shit, Derrick says. We’re going fishing at Kev’s. I have an extra pole in the garage, Tim tells him. How will it feel? Standing on the dock they always do the water a steady swirl under him, waves from the motorboats hitting the dock, the splashes of water jumping like Jesus bugs through the cracks, soaking his feet.
That clear fishing line dangling in the water, his hands unable to stay steady, the slow swing of it causing him to lose his balance. He thinks about falling in. He thinks about drowning. Derrick says it as a way out and lying to his best friends feels so wrong. I’m doing the afternoon shift at Adam’s, he tells them. You’re fucking kidding me, Kevin says. It’s overtime and I need the money. Tim grunts. Kevin nods solemnly. They know this is true. He lives at home with his parents, which so many twenty-four year olds with student loans do.
He wants to get a place of his own like Tim, like his other siblings who have moved far away from home. Plus, he can’t stand being around it, his parents’ dead marriage— like him living in their home is the only thing that’s keeping them together. And Derrick knows his mom is worried about him. How he hasn’t tried to better himself, find a job that can be a career even though he has a college degree. They have a routine. Once a week she calmly asks as she gets ready for her work day in the kitchen, Have you found any writing jobs? Is the Scranton Times still hiring?
Usually he shrugs and tells her he hasn’t seen much. When he walks out the front door for work, he knows that one thing she thinks because he feels it burning across his upper back. A fresh tattoo: My son is a fucking townie. Derrick hears this as he walks into Adam’s everyday and punches in, as he stocks the dusty shelves, eats a turkey sandwich for lunch in the staff room. Townie. Townie. Townie. He thinks of last night at Cleary’s now. He was dancing with one of Rebecca Lewis’s friends from college and they started making out by the jukebox.
She had long red hair and pieces kept getting caught in her lipgloss, tangling with his tongue. But she had disappeared at one point and he remembers stumbling outside the bar, trying to find her. He circled the building and he thinks he remembers her smoking a cigarette, stepping closer, maybe trying to reach for her, kiss her again. Then something happened. Something bad. Something that has since turned fuzzy. He woke up to a text from Rebecca. You’re the scum of the earth it said. Tim sets down his empty glass, slaps a hand on Derrick’s back, meaning that he’s sorry he has to work and miss out on fishing.
Tim walks into the bathroom. Derrick hears the shower turn on. He stands there for a few minutes before gathering his belongings, watching the steam as it crawls out the door. Once outside, Derrick looked down the road. All open space. The sun was rising to the middle of the sky like a picture hanging in the center of a light blue wall. No one out and about. It was quiet, even the birds weren’t squabbling and he was thankful because his head may not have been able to handle it. It wasn’t too hot yet either, being the end of June, being still morning. He didn’t have his car.
Kevin had picked him up and he wasn’t about to go back in there and ask him for a ride. Plus, he didn’t know where to go. He had fabricated a day that wasn’t even close to being real. So he started walking down Tewkesbury Road, knowing it was probably an hour walk to Adam’s if he did decide to make the lie come true and beg to work a shift. Derrick felt like some crazy hitchhiker hippie from the seventies. Except when cars showed up on the road and drove past, slow, eyed him from their passenger windows and rearview mirrors, he wasn’t holding up a thumb. He had his head down. His hair, thick, blonde.
It started to hold the heat and sweat and he wondered what he looked like to them. A ratty, sopping, golden mop of a boy? He imagined them saying to their passengers, He shouldn’t be dragging his feet that way, as if he’s in shackles. He shouldn’t look like he’s carrying a mobile home on his shoulders, the weight of it creating that horrible slouch. He’s too young. Or maybe he’s a townie. Now that would make sense. Derrick has a puddle of sweat in the seat of his jeans when he gets to Adam’s. Swamp ass. But he doesn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed now. He can smell himself too.
The shots he took at the end of the night have been reincarnated to thick droplets of perspiration. He wipes his forehead with his arm. The smell of onions and fermented fruit gets caught in his nostrils. Inside Adam’s Derrick moseys over to Caroline. She’s at the last register, ringing someone out who looks like they are throwing a party. Ten bags of rolls on the belt. Twelve packages of hot dogs. Five cases of Pepsi. Caroline asks the lady if she needs help loading anything into her car. The lady smiles, shakes her head, and tries to pull back the look she gives Derrick as he stands behind Caroline.
But it’s too late. He already saw her initial reaction of a scrunched brow, a wrinkled nose. That’s when Caroline turns. Derrick! The sound of her voice, the worst it’s ever sounded. Scratchy, clean. What are you doing here? She brings her hand to her nose. What the hell did you do? Roll in a field piss and alcohol? || need to work today, he says. Caroline frowns. They’ve known each other since preschool, but have always hung out with different crowds. When it’s slow during the weekday, she follows him around as he stocks the shelves, talking and talking and talking.
Never about her own problems, but her sister’s bad taste in men, her father’s declining health because he has diabetes and still eats like a growing twelve-year-old boy. Mac and cheese, minute steaks, Twinkies, lunchables. He jabs the insulin into his thigh like it will undo everything he just consumed. It’s the way Caroline tells these stories. As if she’s on the phone with an old relative who needs to be caught up on every single detail. He doesn’t find it annoying, though. He thinks it’s funny that she chooses him to tell her stories to, even when he never says much in return.
He only nods as he dips his hand into a cart filled with Campbell’s soup and lines it up with the rest of its soup family. Occasionally she dips her hand in too, hands him the can before he has the chance and that’s when he uses words, when they are holding the same can at the same time and making eye contact. He asks a question so she will keep talking like, Does he go to the doctor a lot? But you’re not on the schedule till Monday, she says now. I know. I really need the money. She puts her hands on her hips. Fine. I’ll call Mark and tell him it’s too busy and that I’m calling you to come in. Derrick smiles.
It is the first time he smiled all day. Thank you, Caroline, he says, and he really means it. Do us all a favor and go wash up in the bathroom. Put some soap under your pits or something, Caroline says. That’s exactly what he does, but he spends awhile in there. Derrick looks in the mirror. His face belongs to a dead man or someone who hasn’t seen the sun in years. He looks sick. And maybe that’s it. Maybe he should make himself get sick. He lets himself think of it and he’s not sure if it’s real or imagined, much like his vision of the redhead from last night. He knows memories do that sometimes.
The unclear become vivid and stranger over the years. He was young, standing under the kitchen table, watching his parents yell at one another. His father was demanding some kind of answer from his mother. She kept shaking her head until his father’s hands went around her neck. He squeezed. He started gently shaking. The shaking got faster, harder, more of a thrust. Derrick imagines his mother’s eyes rolling into her head and he sees what they look like now. A soft, baby blue that stares him down every morning. Eyes that are maybe that light because of secrets and sadness that she keeps locked inside.
He thinks he tastes the redhead still. There is a cherry flavor on his lips, maybe some sugar from her fruity cocktail on the inside of his cheeks. Had he demanded something like his father had? Had he done something his mother would be horrified by? All the shit in septic tanks. The oil that pollutes the ocean. He wonders how he has become all of these things as he stares into the bathroom mirror at Adam’s, holding his breath so that his face has color again. Derrick lets the air out, leans over the sink. He keeps breathing, the sound deep, the feeling and pulse of it so deep, that his shoulders tremble.
