Another New Story!

Below is a new short story.




Miles Wide
By James Bezerra



Miles got drunk and stumbled outside of the little house where he lived with four roommates, one of whom was his girlfriend Josie who was a brunette and not at all a blonde or a redhead like he had always hoped that his girlfriend would be, but she was okay otherwise and especially at times like these when everybody was drunk and dancing around to music so pop-y that it would be embarrassing in the daylight. He stumbled out to the sidewalk and looked down the street, which dead-ended at the popsicle factory, the town’s biggest employer, except for the prison, but that wasn’t really in town. The night air – warm that night – was thick with the smell of blue raspberry syrup. Miles leaned against the telephone pole that stood – like a tall skinny bully – directly in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the house. He closed his eyes and pressed his ear to the wood and listened to the sizzle of voices as they passed across the thick telephone line and echoed down into the wooden pole. There were so many voices that at first it just sounded like an ambient crackle inside the wood, but Miles was just drunk enough that his mind was loose enough to be able to weave down into the crackle and pull the strands of the sounds apart.

. . . I like it when you haven’t shaved in a while because it feels good . . .
. . . they put too much syrup in Vat 5 and the whole fucking town smells like raspberry . . .
. . . I want you to come out here and be part of the world . . .

And that totally made sense to Miles and so he called out to Josie, who was in the house and dancing around with Jeremy, who Miles didn’t like because Miles knew that Jeremy was Josie’s man-in-waiting and that if Miles ever fucked up too bad that Josie would just kick his ass to the curb and Jeremy would step right up into position. Miles and Jeremy even wore the same size clothes so Josie could just kick Miles out of the house and he wouldn’t even have to take his clothes. Miles stumbled back toward the house. He pushed open the door and declared, “Hey, I’m going to go out there and be part of the world!” And everybody cheered.

*

Two years later Miles was two years older and still living in the same house with Josie and although some of the roommates were different, the life of Miles was virtually the same except that Jeremy had gotten a promotion at factory and so now he was Miles’s boss. Miles didn’t know it, but sometimes when he was on top of Josie in bed, she was thinking about Jeremy, who was about the same size and weight as Miles. But in Josie’s head, Jeremy was better, bigger and lasted longer. All Miles knew that when Josie closed her eyes tight and bit her lower lip, she went someplace else and wherever it was, they fucked better there.

*

Another year later and Miles was trying desperately to catch Josie cheating on him with Jeremy because then he could yell and scream at her and give voice and shape and size to whatever it was that seemed to be living in his stomach. He thought that maybe he had an ulcer or cancer and he thought about how if he had cancer then he wouldn’t have to get up every day and go to work and how he would get to sit in the hospital and people would be so proud of how brave he was being even though all he was doing was sitting in a hospital bed all day.

On his breaks at work he went out the back and smoked a cigarette in the shade of one of the tall vats and he thought about how when he finally caught Josie screwing around on him with Jeremy – who got promoted again and worked up stairs in the office now – then he would grab just a couple of things from the house and throw them in the military surplus duffle bag that he got at the Salvation Army and how he would turn to her and say, “I gave you my whole heart and I never looked back and I never lied when I said I love you, you bitch,” and then he would get in his shitty little car and drive away and he wouldn’t even call up to the office to tell them that he was quitting.

But then Miles would finish his cigarette and go back to work.

*

Six months later Miles started slipping out of bed in the middle of the night and he would always look at Josie and her brown hair and she always looked like she was having such a nice dream and he would go into the kitchen and take two fast shots of Popov and then go outside and put his head against the telephone pole and squeeze his eyes shut.

. . . and then he said that he really wanted to own a house and have two kids . . .
. . . he touched me though, like touched me, but I felt weird about saying stop . . .
. . . I have to go to Bangladesh of work, but I will be back before the funeral . . .

That really upset him. “Bangladesh,” he spit the word out because who the hell goes to Bangladesh? Somebody who’s trying to impress everybody by pretending to be all important by going to Bangladesh. Miles had never been to Bangladesh and didn’t know anybody who had ever been to Bangladesh and actually didn’t even know anybody who had ever said Bangladesh out loud. He had only ever been to St. Louis.

*

Six months later he was guzzling pink Pepto every morning because his stomach hurt so bad and sometimes when he tried to smoke he would hack up little drops of blood.

*

Six more months later he burned his hand at work. He slipped on one of the pipes leading to Vat 5 and as he fell, he knocked over a Quality Control cart with metal buckets of fresh, hot syrup. It all splashed on the ground and spattered the side of his face and covered his hand. The syrup was thick and hot and it made his skin break out in hot white bubbles. He couldn’t get Workers’ Comp, though, because he hadn’t been wearing gloves like he was supposed to be.

*

Six more months later and Josie said that they should get married and he said okay and that night when he slipped out of bed, after having sex with Josie, who had climbed on top of him and kept her eyes closed, he had two fast shots of Popov and then got in his shitty car and he didn’t even take any of the clothes like he had planned to, because they would all fit Jeremy anyway.

He drove West because it felt right. He drove West with no plan except to steer toward the darkest spot on the horizon. He didn’t even have to stop because he had a full tank of gas, a carton of Marlboros and a new bottle of Pepto.

He drove and he drove, with the orange light of the sun starting to crack open over the hills behind him until he could feel it reaching into the car and warming the air all around him. Miles just pressed down harder on the accelerator. The two lanes of black were flat and endless in front of him and he knew that they led out into the world, which was where he wanted to be. He blinked sleep away and ashed out the window and flicked the smoldering butt out into the air as the yellow stripes blinked by.

As the signs started to warn him that he was getting nearer and nearer to St. Louis, the land spread out wider and wider. It was yellow and brown and green and it had no edges at all, no periphery, no boundaries. The land stretched for miles and miles in every direction and no matter how much he drove, faster and faster, he felt like he was always in the middle. He felt like he was a single point surrounded by infinite distances and so it didn’t matter which direction he went or how quickly he moved in that direction.

He lifted his foot off the accelerator and let the car glide until it was barely moving at all and then he guided it onto the gravely shoulder and climbed out. He got out of the car and turned back toward the bright burning sun, which only ever looked down on him. He looked at the way it had lit up half of the sky in yellows and pinks and blues and he just couldn’t stand it anymore and he yelled at it, “I want to be out in the world! I want to be part of the world but the whole fucking world is flat. It’s flat. Look at it. This can’t be the world. The world can’t be flat! The world has altitudes!”

The sun didn’t say anything back.

Miles sat on the bumper of his car and smoked.

There were telephone lines strung along the side of the road, they were the only trees around. They an entire forest in a straight line. He pressed his ear up against one of them and he listened with his eyes mashed tightly closed.

. . . well what the hell am I supposed to say to you when you’re like this . . .
. . . we decided not to paint the baby’s room yet, not until we know . . .
. . . the treatments have really gotten a lot more effective in the last few years . . .

Miles realized that he was really far away from home. He looked at his hand, and then at his shitty car, which seemed to be sagging from exhaustion.

When he got to St. Louis, he found a pay phone outside of the drug store where he bought more Pepto. He dropped change into it and called home, but no one answered.





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The phone pole sketch was respectfully “borrowed” from billsharp.wordpress.com