Remarkable

Three Small Town Stories

1

A guy walks into Kentucky Fried Chicken and says, Gimme some chicken. Maybe he has a gun and maybe he has only his finger, shaking and sweating underneath the front flap of his jacket; either way, his demand is not for money but chicken. Two piece leg and thigh. Extra crispy. No one in his right mind asks for original recipe these days. And that biscuit had better be hot, don’t give him any of that hockey puck shit. Everyone is worried. Once, exactly a year ago today, a tornado ripped through town and blew out the restaurant’s front windows. Customers, clerks, managers, babies, and dead frozen chickens all huddled in the walk-in for safety. No one was hurt. But today is a different story. If the man with the gun/finger doesn’t get his chicken, he might shoot someone. He might kill someone.

To go, he says. "Didn’t I say to go earlier? I think I did."

You did, sir, says the clerk. Sorry.

Damn right you’re sorry.

This is where the story begins and also where the story ends, because the guy took his chicken and left the store. Just walked right out. And no one called the police and no one posted about it on Facebook and no one tweeted or bleated or cared. The register didn’t even come up short because no money changed hands. But the best part of the story is that it at once represents what’s best about small towns and what’s worst about them. What’s best is that people in small towns will give one another chicken. For free. What’s worst is the tornado’s near miss, the broken glass all over the greasy floor, the children crying, the dead chickens in the freezer, and the people who want nothing more than to eat them.

2

Melissa and Shane are sweethearts. Melissa and Shane are in love. They met when they were twelve and thirteen, but now they’re both in college, home for the summer between their freshman and sophomore years. Melissa is majoring in elementary education; Shane hasn’t yet decided what he’s majoring in, but he’s thinking about Livestock Merchandising, Sports Management, or Art. Today they’re passengers on a hayride, only without the hay.

This is much better anyway, Melissa says. Hay is really itchy.

They could have thrown in some rejects, Shane says. Damn.

Indeed the hayride is a miserable affair, amounting to little more than an open stock trailer, its rusted metal frame and black rubber flooring both searing hot against the noonday sun, pulled by a lazy antique tractor better off dead in some old codger’s barn. The old codger himself is driving the tractor; Shane and Melissa take their seats in the back. Shane takes off his shirt and offers it to Melissa to sit on. She accepts, and they watch the town go by slowly, at about five miles per hour. Liquor store, Baptist church, Church of the Savior, miniature golf course (closed due to arson), storefront church called God’s Garage, Mexican restaurant (closed until further notice), bingo hall, high school, hair salon (really someone’s living room), Subway sandwich shop, football field, church. Melissa likes it here and wants to return after college. Shane does not like it here, but Melissa hopes he is coming around. Aside from the driver, they are alone on this hayride, everyone else in town too hot or too smart to leave their houses after coming home from church. They roll past the convenience store where they had their first date, past the dog pound where they volunteered to raise money for the senior class, past the water tower, now winking a lonely red light to signal impotence or dread, all summer long the pressure has been low, the lawns brittle and brown, the faucets reduced to a trickle, the dogs kept indoors, the hay prices gone through the roof. For the first time, Melissa puts together the fact of the terrible weather and the hayless hayride—maybe this was all they could find or afford. She feels both sad and driven to action; she and Shane, together so young and strong and with so much time on their hands, surely there’s something they can do. In her mind’s eye, she’s planning a spaghetti dinner, something simple and rustic, a fundraiser for all those stricken by the drought. She’s imagining Shane, cutting up behind the counter, donning a chef’s hat and waving a wooden spoon, Italian music in the background, a shiny napkin dispenser at his elbow, cloth tablecloths laundered for the occasion, the authenticity of the Old World, the charity of the new. She’s just about to speak her fantasy aloud when the tractor’s gears grind in a wretched squeal, a lurch forward, then back, then forward again, the long, high whine of mechanical failure still an echo in her ears. She grabs Shane’s arm and asks him what’s going on.

Brakes, Shane says. "This shit is old."

They’re stopped now, and Melissa wants to go home. She sees the shadow of the tree line in both directions, rabbit brush and sage, black-eyed Susans gone to seed, the dry creek bed dotted with plantain weeds and bark from the river birch leaning over them from the bank. She realizes at once they’re outside the city limits, still close enough to walk, but without water they’d have to stop at the convenience store on the way. She wonders if Shane remembered to bring his phone or his wallet, since she, planning a lazy day in his company, left hers on the dresser at home. The old man driving the tractor is familiar—everyone is at least sort of familiar around here—but she doesn’t know his name. She thinks he’s her friend Kelsey’s great-uncle from back east, but she’s not sure. Shane will know what to do.

You need a hand? Shane hollers to the driver.

Sit tight, the driver says. She needs to rest here for a bit. In the shade.

They’re quiet for a while, and a single cloud, like a tablecloth freshly laundered for the occasion, passes over the sun. Melissa looks up to see a deer, a young one, thin and beautiful and silent, drinking what should be water but is really cottonwood hulls from the creek bed below. Shane, too, sees the deer. He does not move or speak. It’s anybody’s guess whether or not the driver—who really is Kelsey’s great-uncle from back east—sees the deer, because his future is already sealed: television and frozen dinners and too many naps in the middle of the afternoon. But in that exact moment, Shane decides he will major in Livestock Merchandising, and Melissa, changed by the deer’s sudden grace, decides she will change her major to Art.

3

The man who killed himself is the same man who used the garden hose every morning to fill the concrete bird-bath in the backyard. The man who killed himself is the same man who baked peanut butter pies but never ate them, insisting he was watching his weight. The man who killed himself is the same man who never went to a restaurant without his own fork, knife, and spoon. The man who killed himself is the same man who killed his son’s goldfish and then lied and said it was already dead. The man who killed himself is the same man who liked to go bowling, in a traveling league, the same man who wouldn’t let anyone but his wife see his closet full of bowling shirts and four very expensive bowling balls. Not that anyone ever asked to see inside his closet because they didn’t. The man who killed himself was handsome, except for his nose and his teeth. The man who killed himself was a magician, but only in his dreams. The man who killed himself is on fire, and that’s how he killed himself, like Richard Pryor did, only faster and with more success. The man who killed himself is not to be pitied because he did some terrible things. The man who killed himself ought to be glad he’s getting out of this hellhole where nothing ever happens, nothing ever happens, nothing ever happens not even after he’s dead.

Adolescence in B Flat

The Telephone Museum is always empty. Marcella, who is embarrassed to tell people her job is to answer the telephone at the Telephone Museum, does schoolwork during her shifts. No one ever calls. Sometimes, late at night, after the doors are locked and the security guard has gone home for the evening, Marcella abandons the carpeted reception area, walks out onto the hardwood floors of the museum proper, past the curator’s office, and, finally, downstairs into the tangled mess of the switchboard room.

The basement, once a state-of-the-art interactive display center, now left to the dust mites, reminds Marcella of the music library in her orchestra classroom at school. The gallery’s low ceiling makes her feel smaller, more easily hidden under the single shadow cast by a desk lamp near the doorway. Ground level windows glow with light from the streetlights outside. Marcella sits in a wooden library seat, her history textbook propped under the chair’s broken leg. She tucks her hair behind her ears and dons headphones, large, padded pillows that drown out the late night sounds of the city traffic. Sometimes she waits a long time before she hears a double click, followed by static, and somewhere very far away, voices, one a man’s, the other, a woman’s.

The man’s voice says, Keep quiet at dinner next time, will you? Not every thought in your head merits discussion.

The Shockleys didn’t seem to mind.

They were just being nice.

Most people are interested in gardening.

Most people are interested in themselves. No one needs a lecture on soil drainage.

Then, abruptly, the conversation stops. Marcella marvels at the couple’s honesty. Married people must possess the freedom to speak without hesitation or fear. She waits another couple of minutes or so, and then, another conversation, this time between two men.

You wanna play ball?

Basketball?

No, bowling ball, stupid. Wadda ya think?

I don’t wanna.

Why?

You called me stupid.

You are stupid.

So are you.

You wanna play ball?

Marcella listens for a while longer and hears nothing but static. She presses the headphones to her ears and leans into the console, closer, she thinks, to the site of transmission. At home, her mother will be waiting up. Any minute now, she will step onto the front porch and call Marcella’s name. She will return to the living room, position herself on the exact middle of the sofa, and look straight ahead at the television’s empty screen. Marcella and her mother own several dozen home appliances, all broken: television, hi-fi stereo, electric drill. Someday, Marcella thinks, she will pack all the dead soldiers—blender, hand-held vacuum, pencil sharpener—into a trash bag and heave the entire bundle into the back of her uncle’s pickup truck: a statement, she thinks, an act of defiance.

Marcella returns to the Telephone Museum’s reception area and stacks her belongings into a picnic basket, a crumbling relic she found in the dumpster behind the gas station next door. Only a backpack designed for camping and youthful journeys across Europe would be big enough for all Marcella carries: half a dozen library books, four three-ring binders for school, and a sculpture-in-progress made from tongue depressors and glue. Working on the sculpture takes up hours of Marcella’s weekend. She must finish the project not for the benefit of an art class but for a required early morning session called Twenty-first Century Focus and Achievement. Lugging the picnic basket all the way home makes her shoulders ache, but Marcella cannot think of a better system. Her mother has suggested a bicycle, but Marcella would rather walk. She has seen