Hope Idiotic | Part 26
Hope Idiotic is a serialized novel. Catch each new part every week on Monday and Thursday.
CHUCK’S MOTHER WAS SICK AGAIN. A massive heart attack. She was in the I.C.U. for three days. Chuck arrived three days later. Neither his father, nor his brother thought to call him with the news that his mother was on the brink of death.
“She got home all right,” Darryl told Chuck over the phone.
“You people are unbelievable,” Chuck said. “I’m coming home.”
Lexi bought his ticket. He had exactly six hundred and fifty-four dollars to his name and although the creditors were hot after more than twice that every month, he spent it on his family. The house was a mess. Every surface was covered with a thin layer of dusty slime, and it reeked of bleach. It was a biologist’s wet dream for sure. There was no natural light. The blinds had been closed so long that opening them was like trying to open an eyelid decked in conjunctivitis. The only food in the house was processed and precooked. Not a single vegetable or piece of fresh fruit to be found.
“We got this magnet of a strawberry,” Darryl said.
“Can you eat a strawberry magnet, Darryl?” parried Chuck.
“I wouldn’t want to. No.”
“Then shut up.”
Chuck threw all the food away. He replaced it with more healthful food that was still prepackaged enough that the three of them could handle it. Bags of salad, salad dressing, eggs, milk, apple juice, apples, bananas, strawberries that weren’t magnetic, instant oatmeal, chicken breasts, steak, potatoes, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, onions, tomatoes, spices.
He used his laptop to create a weekly menu and recipes with step-by-step photographic instructions. He had them printed at Kinko’s and put into a three-ring binder organized as breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. He gave Cal and Darryl cooking lessons for each and every menu item. He made a shopping list with pictures next to the items so they knew exactly what to buy. Chuck understood that variety was not something his family cared about. Survival was a matter of routine.
He bought his mom a used iPod and filled it with music. He told her that she should walk around the house, or outside if she can make it, for at least three songs every day. She should try to add a song every week. This was the closest he’d ever get her to exercising. And he did this with her each day he was there.
By his fourth and final day, Chuck was exhausted and emotionally drained. He’d done the most and best he could. On the drive to the Indianapolis airport, he had an overwhelming desire for a drink. It had been a month and a half since he had touched the sauce and nearly as long since he had had the craving. He figured, “What’s one? I’ve earned it.”
He pulled into a small place just outside of the city. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the joint was empty, save for the bartender and two patrons. They sat at the far end eating stale pretzels and chatting with the bartender while nursing bottles of beer and watching the baseball game on the small television in the corner. These guys looked like regulars. They were in their forties; maybe their late thirties. It was hard to tell, but it was clear that they were dedicated drinkers.
“Who… In the fuck... Is playing Johnny Cash?”
Chuck took a seat at the opposite end of the bar. The bartender made his way over. Chuck ordered a Miller Lite.
“You want some pretzels?” the bartender asked as he popped the cap off the cold bottle and set it in front of Chuck.
“No, thanks,” he answered. He looked over his left shoulder at the jukebox in the corner. “You guys mind if I play some music?”
The bartender shrugged and walked back to the regulars.
The jukebox was the only thing in the bar that had been updated, and likely even cleaned, in what was probably decades. But that didn’t matter much. This was a regulars’ kind of place, and Chuck was grateful to be a stranger so close to a place he used to call home. He inserted a five-dollar bill and chose his six songs—all of them Johnny Cash.
As “A Boy Named Sue” began, Chuck perched himself on his stool and took a long sip of his beer. It felt good going down. His body instantly relaxed. He closed his eyes as he guzzled down another gulp, then released the bottle from his lips with an “Ahhh.” He looked at the bottle in his hands and listened to the song, and for a moment he was at absolute peace.
“Who in the fuck is playing Johnny Cash?” The younger-looking regular said as he slammed his bottle of booze on the bar and looked around as if the place had more than four occupants. “Who… In the fuck... Is playing Johnny Cash?” he repeated as he stood up.
Chuck looked at him, then around the room wondering whether more people had instantly appeared or if the loud drunk were seeing things. “I did,” he said. “Did you have something coming up next? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to play my song first.”
The regular walked down to where Chuck was sitting and got right in his face. “We don’t play Johnny Cash in this bar.”
That was a strange thing to hear. Never in all of his travels had Chuck been to a bar that didn’t have Johnny Cash in the jukebox. And he’d certainly never been to one that outlawed the playing of the Man In Black. And if there were ever a bar that was anti-Johnny Cash, it sure as hell wouldn’t be a rundown regulars’ joint in Red State Indiana.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t know.”
The regular leaned in closer. His breath was hot, and his eyes were bloodshot and filled with drunken hate. He made a fist with his right hand and grabbed Chuck’s coat collar with his left. The regular was about Chuck’s size. Picking fights in bars was probably his pastime. The friend and the bartender were still watching the ballgame on TV, not interested in the pending violence.
Chuck stood up, grabbed the back of the regular’s head and slammed it into the bar with all of his strength. The regular’s face crashed against the wood and sent a tremor across the bar. There was a loud pop when it hit. His head recoiled as teeth and blood sprayed back in an arch—the blood streaked against the drop-ceiling tiles; a tooth landed on a table in the middle of the room. The regular let out a nasal-sounding yelp as he grabbed at his broken and bloody nose, split lips and fast-bruising gums. He fell into a heap on the floor at Chuck’s feet. The friend and the bartender stood stunned at the other end.
Chuck sucked back the remaining two-thirds of his beer. He pulled out his last twenty-dollar bill and threw it on the bar. “Sorry for the mess,” he said, then turned away and walked out.
✶
“I JUST WANTED TO HEAR SOME GODDAMN JOHNNY CASH AND HAVE A FUCKING BEER. Seems that’s too much,” he told Lou on the phone as he drove to the airport in a panic. “I guess this was God’s way of telling me I shouldn’t have had that beer. What the fuck! If I never come back to this goddamn place it’ll be too soon.”
God. Like God gave half a shit about Chuck and his drinking. Weren’t there wars going on? Wasn’t something terrible happening in Darfur? Wouldn’t God be more interested in sorting out those problems before taking time to check in on Chuck Keller and his bottle of Miller Lite? Oh, yes, the omnipotent God. The God who knew all and could be everywhere at all times. Sure, maybe that God gave a shit about Chuck and his drinking. But Chuck didn’t believe in that God. That God lacked all reasoning, at least, believing in that God lacked all reasoning. Belief, religion? Those were things left to those who didn’t require hard facts to prove evidence.
Chuck was a journalist, a fact man, a man of reason. And a God that gave a shit about him and his drinking was preposterous. The reason shit went down in that bar outside of Indianapolis was because there was an asshole with a point to prove drinking there that afternoon. Simple as that. God could not care fucking less.