as a machine and parts, chpts 1-2
DESCRIPTION
The first two chapters of Caleb J Ross' novella, As a Machine And Parts. This novella is current available for publication. Please contact the author with inquiries.TRANSCRIPT
8
1
Eric tosses night-glow emergency phone number
magnets at a 1970’s retro avocado-green fridge, hard
enough to rattle the rebuilt compressor. “Rebuilt” used
loosely; he brags weekly of having fixed the botched part,
defending his neophyte mechanic’s talents by blaming
subsequent failures on untouched pieces. Marsha has
owned this fridge for years, since we first met. We’ve
shared many reheated carryout steakhouse dinners, and
for that to continue I pray Eric gets smart soon. The
magnets, comped from his part time at KCPL Energy, he
handles with dirty fingers and perpetually-grimed
knuckles; this makeup seemingly imperative to his skill;
he’s good. The magnets rarely reflect. A hit, and a loose
coil somewhere vibrates applause.
“Heard you and my mom this morning.” He
breathes this revelation through the widened gaps of his
clenched, yellowed teeth. He doesn’t smoke cigarettes. The
hue has always baffled me.
“Which part? The moans or the screams?”
A magnet ricochets. A rare miss. Eric has a
shaggy-haired, hunched-shouldered look somewhere
2
between flea market redneck and barefooted hippy, with
the mental disposition of both extremes to keep him
consistently at the verge of Red v. Blue political
explosion. For as long as I’ve known him he’s sworn to
one day “get back at this fucking world.” For what, he
never addresses. Possibly for giving him the ever-scent
of sun-baked urine and rubber. I keep Marsha’s windows
open when he’s home.
This morning’s post-coitus exchange warrants
all the more mutual antipathy considering our close
ages. Eric and I share nostalgic referents: G.I Joe cartoons
and China-made cereal box toys. We even shared a
classroom once in fourth grade, but only briefly, as Eric
ultimately traded education for paint fumes and
carburetors. His then neighbor, still his neighbor, now a
friend, Ferret, embraced the role of teacher. By the end of
what would be fourth grade, Eric knew how to lynch a
smooth joint. I like him for this. So far, only this.
I break his magnet’s fire line for a slice of cheese
and some mayonnaise. The refrigerator door handle
stinks of spilled milk, long forgotten, but fitting to the
kitchen’s organically-upholstered décor. Things spill.
Things stay. Bread crumbs decorate mildewed counter
tile grout. Aerosol degreaser overspray lacquers the walls,
the oven, and the dying plant leaves to a spotty,
reflective patina. The daytime home remodeling TV
3
shows that Eric calls “school” would name this style
Vagabond Rustic. I let the door swing hard against its
deteriorating gasket and make a show of wiping my
greased hand on a nearby towel. “You should major in
house cleaning. And fix this gasket.”
“Do me a favor and hit her harder tonight. I like
that.” He grins, gathering magnets from the door.
“That’s your mother.” It’s the only threat I have.
I’m not his father. I’m his peer. Marsha and I will never
marry. She’s too old. I’m too smart. It’s a shame Eric
and I can’t bond. Grade school clique residue keeps us
forever apart: he, an angry deadhead—torn jeans and
Metallica t-shirts his uniform; me, intelligence and a
taste for sweeter sounds. Perhaps if something were to
change we could all come together as a family. A
hastily-soldered yet solid family.
“If you listen hard enough, you’ll hear me moan
back from my room,” Eric says. A magnet cuts the air.
His mother’s sudden appearance curbs my
rebuttal, breaching the kitchen in a shirt I left on her
floor weeks ago. I think I originally took it from Eric’s
closet in a hurry to escape Eric’s inconvenient return
home. This was before his mother and I decided to out our
relationship. We’ve since grown comfortable with him as
we’ve grown comfortable with ourselves.
4
“How’re my boys this morning?” Her skin smells
of copper and her hair of headboard woodstain; we
redecorated earlier this week.
“It’s three thirty in the afternoon,” Eric says, but
smiles like he’s delivering genuinely helpful
information.
“You know I’m great,” I say.
“What’s for breakfast?” she asks, reaching for a
mug from the delicate stack of clean-enough dishes
filling the sink.
“Sausage.” I smirk. An angry magnet shaves
my earlobe, whapping to the fridge door. I’m impressed.
The compressor reports with a tinny vibration.
“I thought you fixed that, Eric.” She fills the cup
with yesterday’s coffee and sets the microwave for a full
minute.
“Probably the cylinder block this time. I’ll get to
it tomorrow.”
“Have you checked the mechanic?” Another
missile, this one hard into my back, then drops to the
ground. “Watch it, son.”
Another magnet, to my neck, then the ground. I
kick the felled weapon under the refrigerator.
“Can it, Eric. Mitchell’s back isn’t right. You
know that.” She turns to the cabinet for bread. I leverage
her turned interest to pantomime sex, hips and ass slaps.
5
Eric takes the bait and throws an entire stack at my
chest.
“Fuck!” I yell, genuine pain.
Three days ago Ferret asked Eric and I to help
him sleeve a dead llama, with an understood-beer-and
conversation payment. Ferret’s first words upon our
arrival were an unprovoked insistence on the animal
having been found dead; “I didn’t kill it.” Which means,
in Ferret-speak, that he did kill it. Ferret would kill
anything if it meant keeping the skin.
I don’t know if sleeve is his word or legitimate
taxidermy jargon; he says it with such nonchalance that
I’d argue for the former. It means the opposite of
skinning; replacing the treated hide over the stuffed
mold, post-gutting. The term sleeving misleads a textile-
savvy layman such as myself, implying a simple loose
wrap with zero mess. But the fit is tight and produces
plenty of mess. They should call it socking, “or Marsha
stuffing” I said to Eric during our visit, choking back a
laugh. I blame his subsequent animosity and hesitancy
to help after my fall on this beautiful comment.
Two things: 1) blood is slick, and 2) Ferret is not
a professional. I took the low end when transporting the
freshly “found” body to Ferret’s basement, and slipped,
landing sandwiched between the greasy concrete and
300 lbs. of warm llama.
6
The resulting pain wasn’t muscular entirely, nor
a skeletal thing. Ferret said he had experience in blunt
force trauma and elected to inspect the contact point with
a stethoscope he kept to “ensure death, when it isn’t so
obvious.” I hoped he meant the animals. After awkward
minutes and additional strange jargon (these words I’m
positive are his: congetudinal breakage, suede abrasion,
100 lb test line stitches), he gave me the okay and
assured me that I was still good to sleeve. I worked well,
too, impressing both him and myself. He called me a
machine, and welcomed my help anytime. Eric and I, as
best we’ve ever done before, bonded…over blood. I fear what
that means.
“They’re fucking magnets,” Eric says, prying
more weapons from the fridge. “Don’t tell me that they
hurt your back.”
“They hurt my back.”
Marsha removes her coffee from the beeping
microwave, intercepting another magnet. “Eric Charles,”
she yells.
That sweet mother’s tone. Using a middle name
works for me, in a dangerous way. “I’m sure he didn’t
mean it.” I say, embracing the moment, nodding toward
the bedroom. She grins. Eric fumes.
I catch Eric digging under the fridge through
filth for my kicked magnet. His audible disgust warns
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me of the impending projectile, but I have other things on
my mind. Other positions and scents already clouding
my brain.
The magnet cuts the air. Contact with my neck.
But this time the smack against the sticky linoleum
doesn’t happen. I rip the projectile from my skin and
rotate to return it, but the magnet won’t leave my hand.
“I’ll keep it then,” I say, sex and sweat on the
brain, and escort Marsha to the back room, her coffee left
steaming on the kitchen counter.
An ambulance ride later and I’m tracking strangers like
barcodes. I’ve cataloged the entire waiting room in
sortable, delimited rows and columns. Thirty-six percent
blond or blond derivatives. Forty-two percent brunette or
brunette derivatives. Ten percent too bleached white to
know. Twelve percent other. I don’t normally think like
this, in numbers and charts. But for the last week,
equations have been my air.
A mother across this fluorescent bio-dome warns
her eight year-old boy in long-tail threats, slowly
bottlenecking into terse commands. He’s using a red
8
marker to color his left earlobe. From my position, his ear
appears vibrant with blood. The child obeys once the
haggard woman reaches single-syllable threats, but he
pouts in defeat, refocusing his crimson dye to the
webbing between his fingers. His sister, sick, a 101
degree temperature I can read for no apparent reason. The
boy and I commiserate. I don’t want to be here either,
friend. We end up here only when nothing else works.
We’re broken machines.
“That’s a fine mother/son relationship,” Eric says,
noting the exchange. “Yelling and teaching. That’s the
way it should be.”
“Your mom is not my mom.”
“Good thing. I’d hope you wouldn’t break your
own mother’s leg.”
Eric drove himself, opting out of the inevitable
awkward conversation regarding his mother’s new
injury. Something like this was bound to happen. Over
the last week, I’ve gained one-hundred seventy pounds,
most of it in broken spurts, but I’ve lost three inches
from my waist. My shoes ceased to accommodate the
shifting shape of my feet, so I wear boots made for
thyroid freaks. I’ve already lost two toes. And metal
detectors hate me. A crushed femur during sex was
bound to happen.
9
It started last Tuesday. I awoke from unsettling
dreams, as they say, to find my left elbow replaced by a
rotational hinge joint. Unsettling may be grandiose, as I
suffered no more than a repeating nocturnal saga
involving numbers, vivid fractions to infinity that I
hang on to like a fable. During sex, I dream numbers.
The dream isn’t, as it once was, fear-inducing; I’ve
crossed that divide between conscious visuals and
unconscious imagery, straddling a new experience. As
soon as a dream starts, I recognize the ruse and have
learned to enjoy the ride. But when I awoke, and the
articular surfaces of my humerus and ulna had shed
skin to reveal metal, waking life too, had crossed that
divide.
My chair moans under my weight. I move the
floor, taking a worry-abused copy of Good Housekeeping
with me. I have trouble thumbing through the pages.
“Who’s the one with questions of respect, here? You want
me to hit her next time.”
“I don’t really love my mom like that,” Eric says
in an effort to retract his earlier oedipal comment from
the kitchen (10,570 characters back). “The situation isn’t
something I know how to fight against. Sorry.”
He insists on calling his mother and me a
“situation,” and bears no restraint of hostilities. As far
as he’s concerned, we’re fucking daylight away from
jaundiced infants. “But look at that kid, Eric. He’s never
10
11
I can smell the hallway latex and colostomy plastic
pumping through the hospital vents. Dr. Fielding would call my
still-healthy olfactories a good thing. He’s a doctor, not a
mechanic, so of course he’s interested in keeping me human.
“So why do you say it?” I ask back to Eric. He sits behind
me with a geriatric topics magazine, his heart beating faster than
it should (98 bpm). “If you didn’t mean it?”
“To gross you out. What you’re doing is sick.”
“It’s not sick.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
“It’s love,” I begin, but catch myself. The word feels so
foreign against my tongue, tangential at best. Marsha and I used
to dance around the concept of love like verbalizing it didn’t
matter. Dr. Fielding said the first to go would be my fingers, and
that the brain would ultimately succumb, but that I should have
some time before I fail. Just last week I gazed in awe at stars.
Now I count them. “Love…” I start again, but a nurse interrupts.
She tells us that Marsha’s casted, then asks our relation. I
let Eric go without me, forgoing an explanation. I use my time
alone to catalog the speckles in the ceiling paint by size.