Delilah - 3

This is the third and last instalment of the story that began a number of weeks ago. If you want to read the first two parts, click on the links here Delilah - 1 or Delilah - 2 before you continue.

Red drove him home after they finished work at four o’clock.

“Don’t stop man.”

“Don’t stop?” Jake said. “I can’t.”

“I’d like to read the whole story,” Red said.

“I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

When Red dropped him at the house, Jake was feeling pretty good. He walked in the house. Ma was in the kitchen.

“How was work?”

“It was okay.”

“Ray’s going to be late so I thought we’d eat early.”

“Okay.”

“Pancakes?”

“Sure.”

But food wasn’t on Jake’s mind; Rabbits was. He wanted to get back to it. Rewrite it before he showed it to Red tomorrow. Red would read it. Red always did what he said he would. Red, who was good for a ride to work and liked his story; how crazy was that? How contrary to how he’d judged him?

He kept thinking this as he went to his bedroom. He scribbled down a few thoughts and began retyping Rabbits on his computer.

“Jake,” he heard his ma call, “pancakes are on the table.”

“Be there in a sec Ma.”

He was typing as fast as he could. Typing. Typing. Word after word. Sentence after sentence.

He still hadn’t finished when he heard the front door open. He’d stayed too long.

“You’re home?” he heard his ma say. “Jake and I are just about to sit down to dinner.”

“Where’s Jake?” Ray said.

“He’s comin,” his ma replied. Her voice sounded different, not relaxed like before. Fear, like smoke wafting into a room under a closed door, was what he heard.

“You asked him for dinner already dinnit you?”

“He’s just doin’ his thing.”

Jake listened as he typed madly capturing words one by one as if they were fleeing rabbits.

His bedroom door opened behind him. There was no knock.

“I bin home five minutes,” Ray snarled. “Yer mom called you for dinner long before that. Get to the … what are you doin’?”

“Nothin’, nothing. I’m just…”

“Let me see.”

Jake didn’t move. Ray stepped in beside where he was sitting.

On his screen was what he’d rewritten of Rabbits. Beside his computer were the pages he’d edited in pencil.

“Yer still writing those stories,” Ray said. It wasn’t a question. “Damn you!”

Ray picked up the pages beside the computer and ripped them in half.

“When are you going to get this crazy idea out of your fuckin’ head. You can’t live on writing goddamn stories. Yer not gonna ruin your life making up bullshit. Yer not a writer! Get to the table. Now!”

Jake stood up. Madness overtook him and at the same time seemed to settle him. He didn’t know what to say only that he wanted to write. Ray grabbed the edge of his desk and yanked it away from the wall.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jake said but he wasn’t talking to Ray.

Ray bent down beside the desk. His right hand went to the Jake’s computer’s power cord. Jake leaped at his keyboard but Ray straight-armed him back.

“No!” Jake hissed, cursing death on Ray.

Ray took no notice. He had Jake by fifty pounds or more; Jake didn’t have a chance. Ray jerked the cord out of the wall socket. The computer screen blinked and went dark.

Jake dropped to his chair and stared at his dead screen.

*  *  *

“He’s writing stories again Jane.”

Jake came to the table as Ray spoke. He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to; hate was like that. Instead he was thinking of how the Elder Rabbit explained to those clan rabbits around him how to deal with their human captives, as humans didn’t really care much for one another because they didn’t care enough for themselves to make it possible.

Jake looked at his pancakes and thought how Elder Rabbit might look at the meal he was being served as he spoke to the other rabbits, wondering whether he was more like them than he liked to believe.

“Jake! I asked you a question.”

Jake didn’t look up and pushed his pancake to the side of his plate. He took his knife and cut a crescent moon shape from the side of his pancake. He reached for the plastic syrup bottle and poured syrup in the space between the two pieces of pancake like water separating two landmasses, two peoples, two ideals never to come together.

He stood up abruptly. He had his answer.

“Jake?” his ma said. “Don’t you like the pancakes?”

Jake shook his head. He wanted Delilah; needed Delilah.

He knew now how Rabbits would end.

“I’m not hungry,” he said and left for his bedroom.

“Jake,” Ray said but Jake didn’t acknowledge him. It was like Ray was one of the clan the Elder Rabbit no longer wanted to hear from.

“Let him be Ray,” his ma said.

Back in his room, Jake plugged in his computer and sat down in front of it. Once it rebooted he began typing, trying his best to push Delilah from his thoughts long enough to let him finish Rabbits.

He typed what he imagined the Elder Rabbit thought about his clan, they will never know the struggle.

He hit the keys to save what he’d written, then stood up.

He wanted Delilah.

He went to his closet and opened the door. He could already imagine his fingertips gracing Delilah’s smoothness. He took off his dirty work shirt and put on a fresh white cotton dress shirt his ma had ironed and hung in his closet. He took off his dirty jeans and slipped into the pressed black trousers that had hung beside his white shirt. He brought his desk chair to his open closet and stepped up onto the chair. There were four boxes on the shelf at the top of his closet, each identifying a different plastic airplane model kit. Two were in front, one on top of the other, and two behind. He carefully moved the front boxes to the right to give him access to the back two. He lifted the top rear box and put it beside the two he’d moved. He slid the bottom box towards him. He lifted it off the shelf, feeling its heaviness. It wasn’t plastic.

“I’m coming Delilah,” he whispered as he stepped down off the chair.

He sat down on his bed with the box on his lap. He lifted the top off the box and set it beside him on his brown bedspread.

Inside were not the plastic parts to make the SR-71 Blackbird pictured on the outside of the box top. Instead he lifted the loaded black 44 Magnum Red had sold him feeling power in its weight.

“Delilah,” he whispered, “Rabbits is finished.”

He smiled at Delilah in his hands. She seemed to smile back at him. He’d thought of this moment many times before; before he’d finished Rabbits; before Red had said he wanted to read Rabbits. It was going to turn out just as Delilah wanted; she was going to win. Jake had known that from the first time he’d laid eyes on her.

Jake put his thumb on the metal trigger as he raised Delilah’s barrel to his mouth. It took little effort to push the trigger.

The End

If you haven't read The Actor or The Drive In, you can purchase them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo, Kobo or wherever you get your books. 

The Actor

The Drive In

Delilah - 2

He couldn’t believe the alarm clock had already gone off twice. He had no desire to get up.

“Jake, the clock’s ticking,” his ma called through the door. She didn’t open the door anymore without knocking first or at least announcing herself after catching him doing his business one morning on the corner of his desk. Though mortified, she didn’t bother him anymore. Now he had his privacy and could go about his business or whatever he wanted to.

He looked over at his desk beside his bed. He could do his business now, he supposed, but didn’t feel like it. The letter was there. So was Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian although he preferred the other title The Evening Redness in the West. He’d fallen asleep trying to figure out how he could make his Rabbits better after reading of few pages of the western classic. There had to be something he could put in the story that would make an editor pay attention and still remain true to the story. His pencil was in the creased fold of the letter. He reached for the pencil and wrote down two words on the letter—mindless reproduction. People knew it happened but now the rabbits did too. It was an idea that struck him watching Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. Rabbits reproduced exponentially. What if rabbits were the intelligent species that decided to take over control of the planet; their uncontrolled multiplying was stupefying. That’s what he’d written.

“Jake!” his ma called. “You’re gonna be late.”

He took a page of Rabbits, folded it, then got out of bed, pulled on his faded jeans that were lying on the floor beside his bed where he’d left them the night before and tucked the page into his back pocket. One thing about cutting lawns was that clean clothes and a shower weren’t a prerequisite in the morning. He liked that. He slipped on a T-shirt that had Clint Eastwood on the front pointing the working end of Dirty Harry's giant .44 Magnum at someone to Jake's right. Summer was good. It didn’t take any time to get ready. He opened his bedroom door, walked to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. In the kitchen he sat down at the table in front of an empty cereal bowl with a boxes of Shreddies and Corn Flakes in front of him. A plate of toast was in the center of the table.

“I hope you don’t get off early today,” Ray said coming into the kitchen, “ya gotta get used to this 9 to 5 stuff sooner or later. Learn what it’s like to make a living.”

Jake didn’t reply thinking, what about living a life?

A car horn sounded outside.

Bobby “Red” Johnson picked Jake up most mornings. He was one of the lesser brains in their landscaping crew; one of the shovels, as Jake like to think of him. More of an acquaintance than a friend, Jake saw Red as a free ride even though he’d already learned there were no free rides in this lifetime. It saved his mother or Ray from driving him and from the inevitable conversation that happened every morning or any time he was around them. It would save him from college talk this morning too. He liked that.

“Gotta go.”

His ma had already packed his bag lunch. He grabbed a few slices of buttered toast.

“Its not good to start the day without breakfast,” she said handing him his lunch.

“Ma, I’m having toast,” he said, raising the toasted bread slices like they were pages from his story.

“You’re mother prepared you breakfast,” Ray started to say then seemed to change course mid-sentence. “You should be more grateful.”

Ray sat down at the table in front of a waiting mug of steaming coffee. Ray was a do-as-I-say not a do-as-I-do kind of guy.

“See you Jake,” his ma called.

Jake waved. He stuck his feet into his unlaced Kodiaks then reached for the doorknob. His hand went to his back pocket. The folded page of Rabbits was still there but he didn’t have a pencil. He never knew when he might need it. An idea, a few words maybe, just something he would want to jot down and not forget. He hustled back to his room and grabbed the yellow HB pencil off his nightstand. He walked by the partially open door of his closet. For an instant, he thought of Delilah. He hadn’t looked at or touched Delilah for two days. He knew because he'd counted. She was never far from his thoughts. He often enjoyed just the thought of touching her.

With Rabbits in his pocket and a pencil in his hand he left his bedroom.

*  *  *

“What are you doing?” Mr. Whiteside said, surprising Jake from behind. “No, what the fuck are you doing?”

Mr. Whiteside had come out of nowhere.

The shovel was leaning against Jake’s thigh. His page of Rabbits was in one hand, his yellow HB pencil in the other. He had crossed out the word hurt and was writing the word betrayed above it. He had found another way to make Rabbits better.

“Give me that fuckin’ thing,” Whiteside snarled. “I’m payin’ you to dig dirt not to write words on a god damn piece of paper.”

He snatched the paper from Jake’s hand and crumpled it up. He tossed it in the hole they were digging.

“If you want a job you’ll get your damn ass in gear. If you’re not done today, don’t bother comin’ tomorrow.”

Whiteside left.

Red stepped up beside Jake.

“Dude, you can’t be doing that here. Yer gonna fuck yourself.”

“I gotta do it some time.”

“Then pay more attention. It’s gonna cost you yer job.”

Red bent down and retrieved the paper out of the hole. He uncrumpled the crumpled up page.

“No, no, no, don’t!” Jake pleaded.

“What is this?” Red asked. He started to read.

He was but seconds reading what was on the page.

“Dude this is good.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean this is a good story.”

Jake felt guilty for his earlier thoughts about Red, doubting Red was even literate.

Red looked back at the page appearing to read more.

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to make money to go to school,” Jake lied.

“I know what you mean,” Red said immersed in what he was reading. “Where’s the rest?”

“At home. I got stuck on this part last night and was trying to figure out a way to make it work better.”

“You send this anywhere?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, his hand back on the handle of his shovel, “only about twenty-seven places.”

“And ….”

“They just keep sending it back. I don’t think they even read it but I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well don’t stop, I can tell you that much.”

“Thanks.”

“But you better get the shovel moving before Whiteside comes back. He’ll have your nuts in a vice for sure. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
             “My nuts are already in a vice. One more person squeezin’em won’t matter much.”

***

Part 3 will follow in the coming weeks. If you haven't read The Actor or The Drive In, you can purchase them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters-Indigo or wherever you get your books. 

The Actor

The Drive In

Delilah - 1

Here's part one of a new story--Delilah. After the positive responses from my last story, Beneath The Surface, come visit Jake's world ... for a while... 

The sky was such an inviting blue he almost believed he could reach up and put his hand in it. As he watched the clouds float by they seemed to tempt him to come away with them. Their gentle curves reminded him of Delilah who was never far from his thoughts. He could all but feel her  smooth roundness. He wondered now whether he would get a chance to touch her tonight or even just look at her.

“Jake! Dinner!”

The heavy voice of his step-dad calling from the house through the screen of the open back door vanquished all thought of Delilah. Like a loud thunderclap it brought him back to the field he was lying in behind the house.

Jake figured it was pretty close to dinner but he didn’t feel ready to come in and leave the quiet of his thoughts and imagination. He wasn’t hungry. But dinner wasn’t about to wait for him. Nor was Ray.

The letter had come. They didn’t like Rabbits. It wasn’t quite what the magazine was looking for. Jake thought Rabbits was good—really good. But now it didn’t matter. It was almost funny. When things didn’t go as he thought they should his thoughts turned to Delilah. It seemed things didn’t go as planned most of the time anymore. But when he touched Delilah, she had a way of making what was wrong not feel so bad. Just gazing at her would make him feel better.

“Get your skinny ass in here now!” Ray yelled. “Your mother has a nice dinner all prepared.”

Jake knew that dinner would be mac and cheese and a cheeseburger because that’s what ma always made, on the rare occasion, when she made dinner.

Jake looked back up at the sky as the clouds morphed into the heart-shaped nose of a dragon. Its piercing eyes seemed to look inside him. A tongue stretched out toward the ground like a walkway—a walkway to the sky; a stairway to heaven. Then the eyes changed. Like Frosty’s dark eyes of coal they transformed into the Grinch’s narrowing stare, eyebrows squeezed V-shaped, the green irises pushed to the top of their sockets as the Grinch’s wide lips spread in a not-so-generous grin.

“Jake, get your butt in here!”

Jake didn’t move; he squinted and watched as the dragon’s head became the main mast and sail of a tall ship. His non-response to Ray’s command would set the tone for dinner like the sail would set the ship’s course into the coming tempest.

Delilah would have to wait until later.

“What were you doing back there?” his ma asked as he came to his place at the kitchen table between his ma and Ray, perpendicular to the invisible line that joined them.

“Nothin.”

Jake sat down, picked up his fork and stabbed a couple of cheesy noodles from beside the cheeseburger on his plate. His ma knew how to make mac and cheese like nobody’s business.

Looking at the noodles on the end of his fork made him think of his dragon-in-the-sky’s inevitable slayer. Jake was no dragon slayer, more awed by the dragon’s presence. The dragon slayer was near enough though sitting at the dinner table right beside him.

“So, what was going on today?” Ray asked.

“Not much.”

“Did you go to work?”

“For a few hours. Mr. Whiteside sent us home early.”

“Early?”

“He didn’t have any more work after we finished mowing the lawn in the morning. Told us to go home and enjoy our afternoon.”

“Wow,” Ray said, “that never happens to me. You ever think about gettin' another job?”

“No, why?”

“To help yer mother pay for tuition for one.”

“Tuition?”

“College?”

Jake hesitated. He had no intention of going to college. He’d said it a million times. But every time he said it, detonated another argument. Why would he go to college and waste his and his ma’s money when all he wanted to do was in his head and hands.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. It was an acknowledgement, not a signoff.

He looked down at his plate. The noodles were in disarray yet every noodle looked the same. The melted cheese stuck them together. Ketchup made the noodles look like guts splayed out on his plate. But it really wasn’t what Jake thought guts looked like. Still not hungry, he picked up his burger and took a bite. He didn’t feel like dressing it.

“Don’t you want anything on your burger?” his ma asked scrunching up her face in feigned pain.

“Nah, I’m not feelin’ it.”

“What are you doing tonight?” his ma asked.

“I dunno.”

“What time do you start tomorrow?” Ray asked.

“Eight.”

“Supposed to rain tomorrow,” his ma added.

It hadn’t rained in days.

“You know yer mother is gonna to have a hard time payin’ yer tuition for college,” Ray went on. “You know that don’t you?”

“She doesn’t have to,” Jake said. The topic was coming up like vomit. He had no interest in even talking about it.

“What do you mean by that?” Ray asked holding a fork full of mac noodles in front of his mouth. “You gonna suddenly strike it rich?”

“No, I’m taking a year off.”

“We’ve been through this Jake,” his ma said. “You take a year off and you’ll never go back.”

“Go back! I don’t wanna go!” he shouted suddenly enraged. It was like they thrived in making him angry. He set his fork down beside his plate and stood up.

“Good night.”

***

Thus ends Part One. Parts two and three will follow in the coming weeks. If you haven't yet read The Actor or The Drive In you can get them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Chapters-Indigo or pretty much wherever you find books.

The Actor

The Drive In