Day 31

Turned in my grad school check.  Hopefully I can get in.  I'm trying to wake up earlier and do this stuff, maybe 6 or 7 in the morning if possible eventually.  Still can't wake up before 7 if my life depends on it.

This one isn't as bad because I got into a rhythm at one point where it kind of unconsciously wrote itself.  And I think that's what we're going for, really.  Where you can hear what you're saying and you don't hate it, and it keeps coming.  If I had more time there'd be a lot more here.

            The armchair rested by the head of the outdoor pool.  Bronco sat staring at the “For Sale” sign on the law, tempted to chop the thing down although he knew if he could just take it down the whole thing would be easier.  His hatchback Ford Bronco sat in the driveway, his namesake, a purple blur that appeared to always be in motion.  It hovered over the cement, like a wild tiger which was only sleeping standing up with it’s tensed muscles ready to spring into action at the signal of the smallest danger.

            Bronco opened the basement door and hit the light which hhung from the string.  It illuminated the dust particles in the air and gave the whole place a cavernous feeling.  The dingy mildewed little shack was dwarfed in size by its basement, after the lengthy excavation process Bronco had worked tirelessly at.  He saw his pickaxe and mounted flashlight down on the wall, still impressed with himself in the way he had used duct tape and gorilla glue to fasten the thing in succinct focus on the tunnel he was uncovering.  Mounds of dirt which was a dark black on the bottom and almost dry on the top covered the ground on both sides of the wooden flight of stairs, obscuring the dimensions and shapes of the walls behind them. 

Clearing the cobwebs from the tunnel, Bronco filled a dish with carrots and lettuce and left it at the hole at the end of the corridor.

“Here pretty pretty pretty,”  Bronco cooed in his most affable of voices.  He coughed, clearing his throat, as his voice grew gruff due to his smokers cough. “Cmon goddamn it.”  He growled.

It was Bronco’s fault the creature wasn’t coming out.  He had dug too far, directly into its home, and when it implored him to stop with a firm hand in his face he had kicked it in the teeth.  It disappeared through a tunnel of its own making which met up with Bronco’s tunnel, and Bronco assumed it had made its way undeground to an organized town of some sort.  There was a civilized streak in its eye when it glared up at him with the imprint of his boot on its cheek, and after stubborn weeks of self righteousness he decided to make amends.

Bronco sat waiting by the hole sitting facing the stairs when he heard the phone ring upstairs.  He let it go to the answering machine, retrieving a lighter and a Pall Mall Red from the pocket on his leather jacket, and as he puffed the thing without steadying it with his hands he heard:  “Uhhhh, Mr. Bronco, this is Steve from the office.  We have found an interested buyer in your property.”  (Probably want to tear it down and turn it into a parking lot) “We expect you to be on your best behavior when he comes by, our realtor will make an appearance a half-an-hour beforehand to discuss… ahhh… logistics with you.  He asked I be stringent in demanding you are out of the house when the clients arrive, you may want to find something… ahhh constructive to do.  He’ll be there at two oclock tomorrow. Thanks Mr. Bronco.”

            The sounds of a phone being fumbled and then slammed onto a hook along with exhaustive sighs turned into a dial tone which then faded out.  The answering machine ran to the end of its tape and he could hear it flip over. 

“If I had a cellphone, I probably would have answered that”  Bronco snickered to himself as he kicked the mud off of his steel toed boots.  He left the tray of carrots by the entrance way, not noticing a hand reaching through and grabbing a handful of carrots as he ascended the stairs.

             Bronco’s abode was littered with garbage; half empty Michelob Ultra cans, pizza boxes, newspaper.  The surfaces of his half circle table in the den was covered with manilla envelopes.  Flipping a chair out from under the table oh one leg and recklessly plumping himself down onto it, he flipped on the TV.  As the tube fizzled into focus, the sound of some televangelist’s prattling was already into focus.  “Turn your life around!”  He called.  “Do not let the lechers change in you what is really true, and good!  Be good on your own, I don’t need to be standing up here telling you what you should already know!”

Bronco appreciated the stern talking to.  He flipped through his folders, audits and tax forms and lawyers letters lined each.  They were separated into months, and as so Bronco could relive the crumbling of his business from the early stages of pestering cajoling from their transformation months later to insistent demands.  It was the devil, Bronco was sure of it, the way the voice in the print mutated and began to show its true self the more Bronco attempted to will it to do otherwise.

A woman hadn’t been over in months.  He couldn’t recruit the coffee shop waitress to sit on the roof with him and the BB Gun after he let the house become such a mess, the For Sale sign on the front lawn made it easy to dismiss all of his big talk.  He resigned himself to eating the greasy hamhocks and chitlins from the diner up the street with the Platinum Delta Card in earlier years he swore was a contingency plan.  Now, the card was only helping him let himself go.

Bronco raked the lawn, trimmed the bushes, and cleaned up the pizza boxes into a neat pile.  He imagined a younger version of himself watching from between two large trees like Mustafa’s disembodied head, turning away each time he looked up pleadingly for advice or consolation.  He sighed as he lifted the top of the dumpster, inserting the contents of the tied yellow garbage bag into the side marked Garbage Only.  “This is garbage,”  He thought.

Bronco was never going to wash his sheets, and he inserted himself between their starchy hardened layers like a vampire back into its coffin.  He stared at the ceiling holding the top of the blanket below his head with two curled biceps.