Bill Parson’s piss smelled starchy as a potato. The color, a dark yellow, made it seem as if he’d been drinking all night, a feat he hadn’t accomplished in over a decade since he felt obligated to stay sober in a town where such a vast majority of the law enforcement involved confronting the tragedies of alcohol. Still, the piss steamed, almost brown in its yellowness. Small bubbles in the toilet, the stench rising and reminding him that he needed to drink more water. His head hurt, too. He could feel his temples thumping like when he wrestled in the 145-pound championship match at State, and his opponent, Channing Duncan, an already two-time champion whose left ear gnarled like an old apple, caught Bill in a head-and-arm, hooking Bill underneath the armpit and spinning him onto the mat, his head ringing, the crowd darkening.
He rested his palm on the wall and leaned in, still holding his penis even though he’d finished urinating. Bill had hit middle age, and in the existential crises of that time, when men fully become their fathers, Bill didn’t buy a convertible or cheat on his wife, he didn’t dream of a life without children or wish he’d been wilder in his youth. Rather, he started to wonder whether his experiences were illusions of the senses. It started with a book of poems left by an inmate in the cell. The book was open to a Stevens poem, and someone had underlined the phrase, “Once, a fear pierced him,/ In that he mistook/ The shadow of his equipage/ For blackbirds.” Until then Bill had never read much poetry, but the lines hit him as accurate. How often had he mistook a crack for a bug, a branch for a bird, a stranger passing on the street for his brother? Why, then, would it be so hard to fathom his whole life playing out like this? Days later, in the cell, again, another line, from a different poem: “The Monkeys make sorrowful noises overhead.” In the margins, someone had written, “The monkeys are not sad. The wife is sad at her husband’s absence. She is projecting.” This line of thought would come to dominate Bill’s life. Everywhere he went, he felt as if everyone’s reactions were a projection of his mood or his perception of them in relation to his brain’s finite capacity to gather and process sensory information. He began reading books on the brain, literature and philosophy. He started discussing moments of his life with his family to see if he’d experienced them or remembered them in the same way. Often, of course, he hadn’t. It was worse than the fear of death, really. It was the realization that the idea of Truth was dying.
As he breathed in and zipped up his pants, he heard the phone ring. When he walked out of the bathroom, the operator, a red-haired woman named Janice Freeman who had divorced Bill’s uncle years ago, held that impatient look of hers, red brows scrunched, cheeks flattened and wrinkled. He knew what it meant. Severins. The man was chemically imbalanced. He’d been at it again, harassing county workers. Bill suspected that he was harvesting marijuana on the land because every time a group of boys, hired by the county to keep noxious weeds from spreading, drove near his property, Severins barreled over in his truck and cursed them out. Severins and Bill had went through all 12 grades of school together, so he knew what type of wild had molded over in Severins’ consciousness. When they were in the fifth grade, their classroom had the type of desks with empty spaces to store supplies beneath the upper writing surface. When you tilted the surface up, it would lock at an angle in order to paint or draw on tape-held paper. Once locked, the only way to tilt the desk up further was by bringing it all the way back down and restarting the process. One day, Bill saw Severins reaching under his desk. Muttering, always muttering. When Severins couldn’t find what he wanted, he stuck his whole head and both arms under, and in his wild movements, the top fell on top of his shoulders and locked, trapping him inside while he kicked and screamed and jolted the desk violently. It reminded Bill of the way furniture moved in horror films when ghosts raged. As the class laughed, the teacher called the janitor to unscrew the desk. When Severins finally pulled his head out, he had a half-broken, peach-colored crayon stuck to his forehead.
Another time, in the middle of eighth-grade lunch, Bill started to eat pineapple that his mother had sliced from the whole fruit. Even at that age, Bill could tell that Severins, who was licking his lips, had never seen fresh pineapple before. When Bill refused to trade him for an apple, Severins smiled, balanced the apple on his palm, and said to everyone at the table, “Watch this.” He smashed the apple against his forehead repeatedly until juice dripped from his chin and chunks of core and skin splattered the table. As adults, Severins admitted to Bill that it had probably been the quicksilver that caused the imbalances and impulses in his behavior. He said that as a child his sister and him had taken apart a thermostat and stretched the quicksilver between their fingers. He thought it had poisoned him.
Severins’ son, Wallace Jr., and Bill’s son, Phillip, were the same age. Well, that wasn’t technically true. They were in the same grade, but Severins’ boy was older because Severins hadn’t placed his child in school until the family of his late wife realized that the boy had been staying home. They’d petitioned the courts for custody, and the judge let Severins keep the child as long as he enrolled him in school. This made Wallace Jr. two years older than the other kids, and the age gap really showed when football started in seventh grade. The coach (and, of course, middle-school history teacher) had to borrow shoulder pads and pants from the JV squad of the high school. People didn’t mind so much the size difference, however, because of Wallace Jr.’s timidity. Possibly brought on by the embarrassment he’d held for his father, Wallace Jr. never seemed to use his full strength or energy. Once, he lifted a running back from Helena off his feet but finished by kneeling and setting the boy gently on his back. Whenever he saw his son’s kindness, Wallace Sr. went wild, pacing and yelling from the stands, flailing his arms, calling his son a pussy. Eventually, Severins got banned from the games. It wasn’t for anything too crazy; it was more like an accumulation of events, all adding up to intolerable. He swore, threatened refs, and berated his son. He slammed his hands on the bleachers near other parents if he thought they weren’t paying attention. He called the coach “a yellow-bellied weasel.” On the day of his exile, it was raining hard, and Severins hadn’t brought a raincoat or umbrella. He stood on the bleachers before the game, hair a wet mop, jeans dark. Water dripped from his nose and both nipples shown through his cheap white shirt. As the boys from the other team began to stretch, Severins zipped down the bleachers.
“You pussies. We’re going to murder you.” A few feet from other team’s players, Severins stood like he’d imagined a general would when addressing his men before battle—back straight, fist beating against chest, pointing to emphasize words. “You fucking wimps. You don’t have a chance.”
The kids from the other team glanced up before looking around at each other and laughing. Severins flared red, and stepped back, elbows bent, about to charge. Thankfully, the coach grabbed him by the back of his neck. The rest of the parents clapped as the refs escorted him to his truck.
So, when Janice informed him of the situation with Severins, Bill knew the best word to describe its outcome—Unpredictable. That day on the field, Severins could have went wildly or he could have gone quietly. The same held for today, Bill thought.
As he drove up into the Rattlesnake, an area of town above the valley, he turned the bend past the “fresh eggs” sign, and when his car straightened down the stretch, he witnessed two county workers, both high-school boys, sitting on the side of the road. The first, a blonde with a Denver Broncos hat on, held his knees to his chest. He was the high-school running back. Teddy. Trevor. Or Travis. Something with a T. The second lounged back on his hands, wearing that stupid smirk only teens can achieve. He blew a big green bubble that he popped in his lips. That was Landon. Everyone in town knew Landon because of his condition. Beside them both sat two backpacks strapped with containers of bright blue chemicals and hoses from which to spray the weed-killing liquid. Severins stood over them, scratching his thigh with a hunting knife whose handle was colored camouflage. He wore jean shorts, cut loosely so the ends frayed, and an oversized, yellow t-shirt that read, “Kentucky,” which he’d obviously purchased from a thrift store. Severins never looked behind him, focusing instead on the boys, but as Bill emerged from his squad car, Severins tilted the knife so that it reflected the light towards the sheriff.
“Mr. Sheriff.” It’s what Severins called him. Bill thought it was probably a joke, though Severins never smiled.
“What are you doing here, Wallace?” The sheriff held his hand over his gun. As he stepped forward, wind moved the branches of trees, making a soft, sighing sound—the same way the sheriff felt, though he knew it was only the pathetic fallacy, projecting his own emotions on nature. Still, though, he felt it, and it sounded that way.
“The wind and I agree,” the sheriff said. “This is not where I want to be today.”
“This is my land,” Severins said. When the smug boy sat up, Severins flashed the knife, so the boy leaned back on his hands again.
“No, Wallace. It’s not. The road is owned and operated by the county. These boys have every right to be here. So let ‘em go.”
“Poison,” Severins said. “Every year. More and more poison. This one’s boots are covered in it. They reek of death.” He pointed the blade at the blonde boy’s blue-stained boots.
“Why are your boots that color?” the sheriff asked.
Landon glanced at his buddy, who looked away.
“He sprayed me, sir.”
“Don’t call him sir,” the other boy said.
“See,” Severins said. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” His face twisted in a pleading expression. “Do you know what the chemical does? It breaks down the cellular structure of plants. Imagine what that would do to humans. Can you imagine?”
He could. The sheriff had seen the behavior of men with brains sopped from alcohol and economic depression. The way their hands shook and their eyes puffed despite the dryness of their skin. He had seen what wastes lay from living in the Bitterroots.
“These boys are going to get behind me now, Wallace. They’re going to get in the truck and leave, and then we’ll talk about this.”
“I won’t be grateful to you,” the boy with the T name said. “Don’t expect that.”
The sheriff didn’t care. His job wasn’t about gratitude. It was about the law, or at least at first. Lately, it just felt like it was about the repetition of motions, like an engine or a sewing machine.
Severins scratched his forehead with the knife. “They can get behind you, but they can’t leave.”
“No. That’s not what I said. They’re going to leave. Right now you’re in a little trouble. Soon, if you don’t listen, you’ll be in a lot of it. I’m trying to help you here.”
“You’re trying to help them, not me. This is like that day at the courthouse.”
A few months back, Severins had shouted at a temporary worker in the Clerk and Recorder’s office of the courthouse. The temp was filling in for the actual Clerk and Recorder, who was on vacation. Severins had developed a crush on the clerk, a small woman named Melinda who wore floral dresses and different colored hemp bracelets on her wrists. Because she set down her papers and smiled when he talked to her, Severins fell for her in a purely platonic way. The bind of her marriage made her off-limits for romance. His morals, however, allowed for friendship, a companion, someone to talk to who spoke in unclipped sentences and phrases beyond general pleasantries. So when he’d heard that she collected rocks, he drove to Flat Head Lake and scoured the embankment, the brush, the depths. He even put on goggles to dive down deep. After he found a stone shaped like a dog, he hoisted his hand in the air, parading the stone. “You see this?” he called out to the waters and to the birds. “You can’t have it. This is Melinda’s rock. Not yours.” A few campers stared, then finished setting up their tents or preparing their lunches.
“She’s not here,” the temp had said. Severins had placed the stone on the counter. Its soot had fallen onto some of her papers.
“Yes, she is.”
When the temp again explained the situation, Severins had started to scream. He said that she would have told him if she wasn’t going to be here. They were friends. She wouldn’t inconvenience him like this. Eventually he started waving the rock in her face and banging it on the table until someone called the police. When Bill arrived, the temp had closed the partition, and Severins was slamming his hand against it. Bill told him to quiet down. A crowd had gathered. One of the young lawyers was eating a sandwich on the bench with his legs crossed.
“They’re liars,” Severins said. He spread his hands and legs, assuming the position without being asked. Bill patted him down, felt something hard in his pocket. Severins had been known to throw small wrenches into the road, and Bill figured that’s what it was. He pulled it out without thinking, and as he did, Severins twisted around, shrieked, and smacked his hand. The pipe busted on the floor in front of the crowd. The small plastic bag of shag weed lay there too. The sheriff didn’t care about the weed, really. He actually hoped it would calm Wallace down. But the lawyer had seen it. He even nudged it with his brightly polished shoe so that it slid towards the sheriff.
“I am trying to help you,” Bill said, looking at the two young boys, then Severins. “If I wasn’t, my gun would be drawn.”
“Your hand’s near it.” Severins spoke fast, as if he’d anticipated the sheriff to say this.
“Shoot him,” the smug boy said. Bill wanted to shoot the boy.
“Get behind me boys,” the sheriff said. “You’ve agreed to that, Wallace.”
When Severins motioned them with his head, the boys startled up and ran towards the sheriff. With the boys safely behind him, he held his hands out wide, like a blockade, but he realized how foolish this looked and let his hands drop. Severins mumbled something about the chemicals, saying the precise name, a terminology the sheriff couldn’t hear and wouldn’t recognize if he could. As he repeated its name, Severins’ head slumped, chin to chest. He swung the knife back and forth. The sheriff told him to put the knife away so he could handcuff him. As the sheriff gave this command, he heard a noise from behind him. First, a giggle, but stifled, like someone trying to hold in church-laughter. As the wind picked up and blew a candy bar wrapper at his foot, the sheriff misidentified the hissing sound as wind. As he looked at the wrapper, though, he saw several small blue dots near his boot. He heard one of the boys cry out in annoyance and yell something about his shirt, and he heard the smug boy laugh and challenge his friend in a race to the truck. As the sheriff wondered whether the chemicals had hit his pants, he heard Severins mumble that word again. It was how Bill had begun to feel about his job and his life in the Bitterroots. Poison. Poison. A degeneration of cells. Severins mumbled it over and over as he charged forward. By the time Bill reached for his gun, it was too late; the knife was already in his eye. His arms and legs went limp. He could hear the boys gasp and then scream. He could hear their boots clomp as they ran. He could feel the coldness in his hand, like the time he’d refilled the coolant in his squad car’s AC and the cannister of freon iced over as it emptied.
“You can’t do anything,” Severins said. He was standing over Bill. The sheriff could see him wipe blue spray from his neck and cheek, and he could see the trees behind him sway, the branches alive (there it was again; what a silly projection at this moment) in the wind. He could feel blood stream over his face. His stomach felt like a dumpster. A truck started, drove off. He could hear and feel Severins kick dirt over him.
“The law never could.” Who said this? Was it the sheriff? Was it Severins? Did he think it? Did it matter now?
Jesse DeLong works as Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. His poetry book, The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook, was published by Baobab Press. Other work has appeared in Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, American Letters and Commentary, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Typo, as well as the anthologies Best New Poets 2011 and Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner. His chapbooks, Tearings, and Other Poems and Earthwards, were released by Curly Head Press.