The Black Eye
by James H. Duncan
The famous actor came home long after finding his calling in that golden west, after killing them downstate on that police drama in Brooklyn, and now he has returned a hero, sitting among familiar faces once more. Ben Holdenson and a few of his brothers even helped the famous actor steal a shopping cart full of six-packs from the back of the Lion Foods earlier in the afternoon, just like the good old days. They brought the whole cart to my house where we sat around drinking Schaeffer and Iron City, littering my lawn in ways my wife would scream about later, but not if the famous actor stuck around. Leanne couldn't curb the way she said his name when he popped up on the covers of the magazines that stared back at us from the cashier's line at the supermarket, his teeth pearly white and paid for. Then again, neither could half the women in Glens Falls.
But I didn't mind so much. He was never that bad of a guy, and he still didn't seem so bad now that he was famous. I mean, he came back here when he could have been in Malibu or Milan, Aspen, maybe Key Largo...hell, I don't know where the rich play. All I know is the famous actor sat on my porch, two steps down from me right next to Oren Havermayer, who was a bit of a big name in his own day. But that was vaudeville, a far cry from the movies they put out these days. Even the bad ones are chock full of glitz, and everyone has the most beautiful teeth. Made me nuts to see Leanne mopping her crooked teeth with that bleach you buy with the little brush applicator. Didn’t make a damn difference as far as I could tell, and only served to sting her gums and make her that much less willing to make out with me just a little bit before bed.
"Tiresome? How can you be tiresome? How can you complain at all with millions pouri' in?" Vance Dooly asked. He'd wandered up just as the famous actor mentioned he was on some much-needed downtime between the finale of his TV show and his next film. "Try clearin' out clogged toilet lines all damn day."
"More money is more problems, you half-wit," Havermeyer told Dooly, who cringed every time Havermeyer let him have it, which was often. "Trust me. You think Park Avenue cares about your feelings just because you have a roll of hundreds in your pocket? Nobody cares about nobody, especially at the top. I should know, and I wasn't even middle-rung. Lonely as anything up there."
Ben Holdenson spat on the sidewalk. "Balls. You know how many women I'd have on each arm if I were that much of a big shot?"
"You'd be broke in a week considering what you'd have to pay to have any woman stand within ten feet of you," Havermeyer quipped. We all laughed hard as hell, with the famous actor's relaxed chuckle hiding deep within ours like a quiet breeze in a gale. Havermeyer put his hand on the famous actor's shoulder and asked, "But what's the real problem, kiddo? Why so long in the face?"
He turned his perfect teeth and blue eyes to us, his assorted motley friends of yesteryear, the dregs of Glens Falls, most of us never even leaving the county, much less the state, and he grinned sadly.
"Women. What can you do about them?"
"I'll tell ya what you can do," Ben Holdenson snorted. "I got all sortsa ideas, ha ha!"
Havermeyer rolled his eyes. "He said women, not stray dogs. Go ahead, kid."
"You all know my wife, I'm sure." A series of chuckles and a whistle from Ben let him know we were right there with him. "We've been...fighting a lot. I really don't want that getting out, but I can't get my mind away from it. It's been harder because our lawyers refuse to consider allowing us to split because we have more draw power if we stick it out. But to sit in that house alone knowing she's sitting on the other side of the city wanting nothing to do with me…I can't take it anymore."
"Why not get out, go get some strange?" Vance Dooley offered. "Hell with her."
The sound of the famous actor's sigh and the silence that followed made me feel hollow, almost bad for the guy, but I thought of my wife and the way she'd say his name and I just slugged back another mouthful of beer. Havermeyer nodded knowingly, and he stood up to address all of us at once. We leaned in like children at a campfire telling scary stories to one another.
"I had it bad for this beautiful dame once, worked the women's unmentionables counter in a little store on the upper west side of Manhattan. I saw her on the street and followed her to work five times before I even said hello. She knew me right away, from the show, and we were married in just four months." Havermeyer's eyes gleamed with the memory running through his mind. "Beautiful girl, but within a couple years I knew it wasn't going to work. She wanted children, and I didn't, simple as that. Back then, divorce wasn't a dime a dozen like now. You needed a reason. You needed cause. But we had none, nothing that would hold up with the judge. That and she wouldn't dare bring it up. She was too proper to even think of it, but I knew. I felt awful for her because she wanted children so badly and I knew she'd fallen for a man who owned a bookstore down the block from her shop. They were perfect, even I knew that."
"So, she comes home this one afternoon sobbing, and she admitted that she didn't love me anymore but she felt guilty about it and didn't know what to do. Seeing her like that, my God, my heart broke for her. I ran my fingers through her hair, fine beautiful blonde hair that smelled better than anything I could ever describe, and I held the back of her head, kissed her once on her cheek as she sobbed, and then socked her right in the eye as hard as I could."
Vance Dooly gasped, "What the hell for?"
"Because I loved her, Dooly. Now zip your fly and let me finish, will ya?" Havermeyer turned back to the famous actor. "I loved her deeply, and I knew it was the only way. She ran off, and I never got to fully explain myself to her, and a week later the doorbell rang and I was served with separation papers. They were approved. I hear she had quite the shiner too. Anyway, as fate had it she ended up having three children with the bookstore fellow. Never saw her again, but I heard stories, and I'm forever glad."
A few of the guys on the porch grinned and chuckled, but the famous actor took up a long stare down the street. Ben tried to follow the performance with an oafish tale of his own, eliciting a few laughs, but the visit was over. I could tell in my gut. The Holdenson brothers finished off the last few cans and I told them to gather the empties and get them the heck out of sight before Leanne came home. Havermeyer took off for the OTB parlor, and as I helped the Holdensons and Dooly with the last of the cans, I saw the famous actor walking down the sidewalk alone, hands in his pockets. Didn't even say goodbye, just stared up at the rooftops as he strolled out of sight.
Leanne's car honked from the other direction a few seconds later and I waved, glad that the Holdensons had taken their cart of empties down through the back alley to Lion Foods just moments before. I waited on the top step as Leanne parked her old Cavalier in the street. She sidled up the porch steps, all smiles and playful eyes.
"Happy anniversary," she whispered as she leaned in for a kiss. We lingered there on the front stoop for a moment before my hand reached behind me for the screen door.
* * * * *
By the time the newspaper hit the front porch, I already heard the news from Leanne. The famous actor was in just about the hottest seat he could find himself, and not a soul from Hollywood to Glens Falls stood with him, except maybe Havermeyer, but I hadn't seen him in weeks, so who knows. The headlines were pretty much what I expected, and the story beneath was almost to the letter what Leanne panted out the night before.
"He punched her right in the face, right in some ritzy restaurant," she said for the fifth time later that night. "It was awful. They have pictures and everything. I hear he was dropped from that big war movie Eastwood is directing."
"No kidding? I didn't know Eastwood was making-"
"That's not the point. Who does something like that? What in the world gave him the notion to hit her, and in public! Ugh, I can't believe I even…"
I paused as I finished skinning the last carrot into the garbage can. "Even what?"
"Oh, you know...every girl in town crushed on him at one point."
I nodded. "Yeah..."
She laughed and dropped another handful of sliced skinned potatoes into the pot of water. "Oh, don't do that. I crushed on you too, you know. Why do you think I have this ring on?"
"My enormous trust fund and this glamorous palace, obviously."
"You're not in a mood again, are you?"
"Which mood would you like, freewheeling, frivolous? I can even do amorous, if you play your cards right."
She bumped me with her hip as I walked by and I returned it with a wink. She asked, "Can you get the garbage? It's getting full."
Sighing loudly, making a slight production of it, I pulled at the bag, slowly tugging it up as air wheezed out from beneath the bulging plastic. The water in the pot boiled and filled the air with a thick, humid hum. I looked up at Leanne and saw her brow dotted with that humidity as she rolled a wooden spoon through the water, her eyes wistful and turned slightly away. I finished tying off the bag and went to the back door, then stopped.
"Leanne..."
She looked up, eyes expectant, mouth parted as if to reply. I paused and took her in. No matter how she tried to pull her hair back in a ponytail or put it up in a bun, feathery strands of her brown hair floated around her face in lovely ways that always made me sad, somehow.
"Let's go down to Stewarts and get some ice cream later. After dinner before it gets too dark. What do you think?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "Perfect."
Good, I thought. Perfect. The door clattered shut behind me and the low-flying clouds rolled by gray and dour above. No rain in the forecast, but the dreary upstate sky always threatened regardless. I walked to the garbage can and opened the lid. As I shoved the bag down I saw a crumpled Iron City can in the shrubs near the back gate leading to the alleyway. I flicked off a few ants and picked it up, feeling the crinkle of the weak metal as I gave it a squeeze.
Inside, the phone rang and I let the can fall from my hand into the garbage bin. It was Leanne's sister, from what I could tell, and they started in on the news all over again. I closed the lid over the garbage and walked down the small strip of grass connecting our pitiful back yard to the front and took to the sidewalk, hands in my pockets. The wind picked up and I stared at all the sagging roofs of our neighbor's houses as I walked away with no place in mind and nowhere I wanted to be.
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, always hopeful of romance and adventure, James H Duncan lives in New York City and is the founding editor of Hobo Camp Review, an online literary 'zine dedicated to the traveling word. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, his stories and poems has found homes in publications such as Pulp Modern, Apt, Red Fez, Haggard & Halloo, Reed Magazine, and Poetry Salzburg Review. More at http://jameshduncan.blogspot.com.
by James H. Duncan
The famous actor came home long after finding his calling in that golden west, after killing them downstate on that police drama in Brooklyn, and now he has returned a hero, sitting among familiar faces once more. Ben Holdenson and a few of his brothers even helped the famous actor steal a shopping cart full of six-packs from the back of the Lion Foods earlier in the afternoon, just like the good old days. They brought the whole cart to my house where we sat around drinking Schaeffer and Iron City, littering my lawn in ways my wife would scream about later, but not if the famous actor stuck around. Leanne couldn't curb the way she said his name when he popped up on the covers of the magazines that stared back at us from the cashier's line at the supermarket, his teeth pearly white and paid for. Then again, neither could half the women in Glens Falls.
But I didn't mind so much. He was never that bad of a guy, and he still didn't seem so bad now that he was famous. I mean, he came back here when he could have been in Malibu or Milan, Aspen, maybe Key Largo...hell, I don't know where the rich play. All I know is the famous actor sat on my porch, two steps down from me right next to Oren Havermayer, who was a bit of a big name in his own day. But that was vaudeville, a far cry from the movies they put out these days. Even the bad ones are chock full of glitz, and everyone has the most beautiful teeth. Made me nuts to see Leanne mopping her crooked teeth with that bleach you buy with the little brush applicator. Didn’t make a damn difference as far as I could tell, and only served to sting her gums and make her that much less willing to make out with me just a little bit before bed.
"Tiresome? How can you be tiresome? How can you complain at all with millions pouri' in?" Vance Dooly asked. He'd wandered up just as the famous actor mentioned he was on some much-needed downtime between the finale of his TV show and his next film. "Try clearin' out clogged toilet lines all damn day."
"More money is more problems, you half-wit," Havermeyer told Dooly, who cringed every time Havermeyer let him have it, which was often. "Trust me. You think Park Avenue cares about your feelings just because you have a roll of hundreds in your pocket? Nobody cares about nobody, especially at the top. I should know, and I wasn't even middle-rung. Lonely as anything up there."
Ben Holdenson spat on the sidewalk. "Balls. You know how many women I'd have on each arm if I were that much of a big shot?"
"You'd be broke in a week considering what you'd have to pay to have any woman stand within ten feet of you," Havermeyer quipped. We all laughed hard as hell, with the famous actor's relaxed chuckle hiding deep within ours like a quiet breeze in a gale. Havermeyer put his hand on the famous actor's shoulder and asked, "But what's the real problem, kiddo? Why so long in the face?"
He turned his perfect teeth and blue eyes to us, his assorted motley friends of yesteryear, the dregs of Glens Falls, most of us never even leaving the county, much less the state, and he grinned sadly.
"Women. What can you do about them?"
"I'll tell ya what you can do," Ben Holdenson snorted. "I got all sortsa ideas, ha ha!"
Havermeyer rolled his eyes. "He said women, not stray dogs. Go ahead, kid."
"You all know my wife, I'm sure." A series of chuckles and a whistle from Ben let him know we were right there with him. "We've been...fighting a lot. I really don't want that getting out, but I can't get my mind away from it. It's been harder because our lawyers refuse to consider allowing us to split because we have more draw power if we stick it out. But to sit in that house alone knowing she's sitting on the other side of the city wanting nothing to do with me…I can't take it anymore."
"Why not get out, go get some strange?" Vance Dooley offered. "Hell with her."
The sound of the famous actor's sigh and the silence that followed made me feel hollow, almost bad for the guy, but I thought of my wife and the way she'd say his name and I just slugged back another mouthful of beer. Havermeyer nodded knowingly, and he stood up to address all of us at once. We leaned in like children at a campfire telling scary stories to one another.
"I had it bad for this beautiful dame once, worked the women's unmentionables counter in a little store on the upper west side of Manhattan. I saw her on the street and followed her to work five times before I even said hello. She knew me right away, from the show, and we were married in just four months." Havermeyer's eyes gleamed with the memory running through his mind. "Beautiful girl, but within a couple years I knew it wasn't going to work. She wanted children, and I didn't, simple as that. Back then, divorce wasn't a dime a dozen like now. You needed a reason. You needed cause. But we had none, nothing that would hold up with the judge. That and she wouldn't dare bring it up. She was too proper to even think of it, but I knew. I felt awful for her because she wanted children so badly and I knew she'd fallen for a man who owned a bookstore down the block from her shop. They were perfect, even I knew that."
"So, she comes home this one afternoon sobbing, and she admitted that she didn't love me anymore but she felt guilty about it and didn't know what to do. Seeing her like that, my God, my heart broke for her. I ran my fingers through her hair, fine beautiful blonde hair that smelled better than anything I could ever describe, and I held the back of her head, kissed her once on her cheek as she sobbed, and then socked her right in the eye as hard as I could."
Vance Dooly gasped, "What the hell for?"
"Because I loved her, Dooly. Now zip your fly and let me finish, will ya?" Havermeyer turned back to the famous actor. "I loved her deeply, and I knew it was the only way. She ran off, and I never got to fully explain myself to her, and a week later the doorbell rang and I was served with separation papers. They were approved. I hear she had quite the shiner too. Anyway, as fate had it she ended up having three children with the bookstore fellow. Never saw her again, but I heard stories, and I'm forever glad."
A few of the guys on the porch grinned and chuckled, but the famous actor took up a long stare down the street. Ben tried to follow the performance with an oafish tale of his own, eliciting a few laughs, but the visit was over. I could tell in my gut. The Holdenson brothers finished off the last few cans and I told them to gather the empties and get them the heck out of sight before Leanne came home. Havermeyer took off for the OTB parlor, and as I helped the Holdensons and Dooly with the last of the cans, I saw the famous actor walking down the sidewalk alone, hands in his pockets. Didn't even say goodbye, just stared up at the rooftops as he strolled out of sight.
Leanne's car honked from the other direction a few seconds later and I waved, glad that the Holdensons had taken their cart of empties down through the back alley to Lion Foods just moments before. I waited on the top step as Leanne parked her old Cavalier in the street. She sidled up the porch steps, all smiles and playful eyes.
"Happy anniversary," she whispered as she leaned in for a kiss. We lingered there on the front stoop for a moment before my hand reached behind me for the screen door.
* * * * *
By the time the newspaper hit the front porch, I already heard the news from Leanne. The famous actor was in just about the hottest seat he could find himself, and not a soul from Hollywood to Glens Falls stood with him, except maybe Havermeyer, but I hadn't seen him in weeks, so who knows. The headlines were pretty much what I expected, and the story beneath was almost to the letter what Leanne panted out the night before.
"He punched her right in the face, right in some ritzy restaurant," she said for the fifth time later that night. "It was awful. They have pictures and everything. I hear he was dropped from that big war movie Eastwood is directing."
"No kidding? I didn't know Eastwood was making-"
"That's not the point. Who does something like that? What in the world gave him the notion to hit her, and in public! Ugh, I can't believe I even…"
I paused as I finished skinning the last carrot into the garbage can. "Even what?"
"Oh, you know...every girl in town crushed on him at one point."
I nodded. "Yeah..."
She laughed and dropped another handful of sliced skinned potatoes into the pot of water. "Oh, don't do that. I crushed on you too, you know. Why do you think I have this ring on?"
"My enormous trust fund and this glamorous palace, obviously."
"You're not in a mood again, are you?"
"Which mood would you like, freewheeling, frivolous? I can even do amorous, if you play your cards right."
She bumped me with her hip as I walked by and I returned it with a wink. She asked, "Can you get the garbage? It's getting full."
Sighing loudly, making a slight production of it, I pulled at the bag, slowly tugging it up as air wheezed out from beneath the bulging plastic. The water in the pot boiled and filled the air with a thick, humid hum. I looked up at Leanne and saw her brow dotted with that humidity as she rolled a wooden spoon through the water, her eyes wistful and turned slightly away. I finished tying off the bag and went to the back door, then stopped.
"Leanne..."
She looked up, eyes expectant, mouth parted as if to reply. I paused and took her in. No matter how she tried to pull her hair back in a ponytail or put it up in a bun, feathery strands of her brown hair floated around her face in lovely ways that always made me sad, somehow.
"Let's go down to Stewarts and get some ice cream later. After dinner before it gets too dark. What do you think?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "Perfect."
Good, I thought. Perfect. The door clattered shut behind me and the low-flying clouds rolled by gray and dour above. No rain in the forecast, but the dreary upstate sky always threatened regardless. I walked to the garbage can and opened the lid. As I shoved the bag down I saw a crumpled Iron City can in the shrubs near the back gate leading to the alleyway. I flicked off a few ants and picked it up, feeling the crinkle of the weak metal as I gave it a squeeze.
Inside, the phone rang and I let the can fall from my hand into the garbage bin. It was Leanne's sister, from what I could tell, and they started in on the news all over again. I closed the lid over the garbage and walked down the small strip of grass connecting our pitiful back yard to the front and took to the sidewalk, hands in my pockets. The wind picked up and I stared at all the sagging roofs of our neighbor's houses as I walked away with no place in mind and nowhere I wanted to be.
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, always hopeful of romance and adventure, James H Duncan lives in New York City and is the founding editor of Hobo Camp Review, an online literary 'zine dedicated to the traveling word. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, his stories and poems has found homes in publications such as Pulp Modern, Apt, Red Fez, Haggard & Halloo, Reed Magazine, and Poetry Salzburg Review. More at http://jameshduncan.blogspot.com.
