Chapter 2: The Last Chance
“There’s a girl out there that’ll treat me fair”
CHAPTER 2: Last Chances
She did not look like a Martha, Cat thought.
Then again, maybe she did — like a Martha might have looked to Cat's great-grandfather, arriving back home from the war. Stepping off the dock onto familiar shores and seeing, with battle-weary eyes, a beautiful woman waiting for him. Martha.
"Hi," Cat said.
A slow smile blossomed across Martha's face.
It was a good-natured, handsome face, with full lips and lively green eyes just beginning to show a hint of age. A few traces of silver glimmered in the soft copper waves flowing over her shoulders. She could have been anywhere between 35 and 50, certainly not young but not exactly old, either.
"Hey there," Martha replied, and stepped in for a hug.
Cat closed his eyes and, for a second, lived in the moment of having this woman close to him. She was achingly warm and soft, like the scent of vanilla pipe tobacco on an autumn night.
"Bruce is done pouring your drinks, I think," she murmured in his ear. "They're waiting at the bar."
Cat gathered himself and looked across the room, where Ozzie and the bartender stood smiling at him and chatting out of the sides of their mouths. Behind them, a man in a grease-stained cook's jacket stuck his head out of a door near the bar. He looked around, gazed in Cat and Martha's direction for a few seconds, then ducked his head back out of sight.
Martha took Cat's hand, pulling him unprotestingly away from the jukebox and the uproar that continued nearby. Cat's ears could barely hear the shouting match now, although the orange giant and the black-hooded ghoul were almost within arm's reach, screeching over the top of each other and gesturing wildly.
"Now Martie, you're not stealing my date, are you?" said Ozzie, handing Cat his shots. "We were just getting to know each other."
They all laughed.
"I'm afraid the time has come for us to part, Ozzie," Cat said after his second swallow of Beam. "It's not you, darlin', it's me."
"Fair enough," Ozzie said, and shook Cat's hand again. "I'll let you kids get to it."
On their way to a corner table, Cat watched Martha's hips sway under her dress like a clock's pendulum counting down his final seconds.
One rare bright spot the Midwest shared with the South, Cat always felt, was a proliferation of women like Martha, who arrived around age 45 in the same way a cask of brandy arrives at age 8. Good ol' gals with a voice like Black Velvet and a twinkle in their eye, and a grin that said they still liked to have fun and could maybe teach you a thing or two about it.
Back in his 20s, Cat had loved these types of women. He flirted with them recklessly, realizing he never had a chance and adoring them for it. It was good to know, in those days, that some of womankind's sacred mysteries still remained out of his reach.
Cat had brooding hazel eyes and a shy smile, and a poet's way with words — especially when he drank, which was often. Before it all went wrong, he'd hoped to be a singer-songwriter; he spent a lot of time inside his own head, folding and unfolding sentences like a paper crane. He could be funny and silly, gentle and sweet, and he'd done enough traveling to seem cultured. In his younger years, girls his age were drawn to him as predictably as lions to a wounded gazelle.
This made Cat furious.
What Cat wanted, back then, was to be seen and loved for what he felt he was: A broken, miserable, ugly creature yearning to be healed. Girls persisted in viewing him as cute and funny, with a few minor flaws they aimed to fix. He loathed them all for their stupidity and, deep down, held out hope that one might succeed. He had no idea how to fix himself; he didn't know how to even begin trying. What he did know was that sleeping around was easy, and easy was all Cat ever really wanted out of life.
But suddenly, women didn't think Cat was so cute or funny anymore. They thought he was a middle-aged creep who habitually talked over people, didn't have custody of his kids, and drank way too much for a guy who couldn't handle his liquor. Cat was beginning to realize he was staring down the barrel of dying alone. And not just that, either. Suffering in solitude through all the long, slow, bad parts beforehand. Becoming an old man alone.
Cat took a deep breath, then a long gulp of his beer; maybe too long. He needed to slow down on the booze, he knew. He was already feeling a little lubricated; if he wasn't careful, he was going to turn into a gibbering ape in front of this woman.
Martha was gazing intensely at him from across the table, like there was something in Cat, far in the distance, she was trying to see. It unnerved him.
"So," said Cat, desperately. "Big River, huh?"
Martha's eyes shifted into closer focus, and she nodded. "Big River. We've been seven generations around here. Not in city limits, but close enough." She inclined her whiskey sour in his direction. "You — Fetterman, huh?"
"Fetterman," Cat exhaled, with a groan. "It's not home, but that's where I live. I'm from down south. Louisiana."
"So you've said," Martha replied, with a curious half-smile. "Baton Rogue. How long since you left?"
Cat tried to shrug nonchalantly and take a drink at the same time, spilling beer on himself in the process. He choked a bit and dabbed at the spill with his sleeve. "It's been a while. I got stuck up here when my kids were born. Just a few years left before the youngest turns 18 and I can hit the road."
Martha raised an eyebrow. "Nothing keeping you here?"
"I've had enough of cold winters and bad food and nothing going on." Something flickered, faintly, in the back of Cat's mind, but he shook his head emphatically. "Nebraska's too flat and dry for this ol' boy."
Martha's incredulous half-smile returned.
"Have you seen much of Nebraska outside Fetterman?" she asked slowly. "And didn't your whole town flood a couple years ago? It sits right on the river, same as we —"
"Yep! Water up to my back doorstep," Cat agreed. "It was crazy. Did you get any flooding over here?"
Martha laughed.
"You sure could say that," she said. "We live in the Swamp."
It was Cat's turn to raise an eyebrow.
"Just outside town, where the river channels merge," Martha continued. "I think it's technically 'freshwater marshlands' or some su—"
"HA!" Cat said, dramatically scoffing. He was feeling good again. This was a subject about which he felt he had some authority. "If you think some little ponds are a swamp, you should see things back home."
"Beautiful country, Baton Rogue," Martha agreed pleasantly. "Up here may not exactly be the bayou, but there's serious wetlands. Water's high enough in the spring season that we sometimes have to get around our place by boat. Everyone in town calls it the Murder Swamp."
She smiled at Cat's brief, shocked silence.
"It's a long story. It's because of someone's last name, not because of any dead bodies."
"So they say," boomed Ozzie from across the room. He raised his beer at them.
"I think they're listening in on us," Cat laughed weakly. "Who's the 'we' living out there with you?"
"Just me and the kids at our house," Martha answered. "Their grandma, sometimes. But Ozzie lives close by, and Reina's out in her place. We're all neighb—"
"What's with the costume?" Cat asked. "On your friend. Reina. The mask and the glasses and all that."
Martha looked at him, very briefly, like he were a slow child asking a stupid question with an obvious answer.
"It's her face," she said.
"'Successors of outlaw country' my sweet ass," declared the masked figure, who was now standing on a chair so she could get face-to-face with the orange giant. "Inlaw country is more like it. Listening to this pabulum is like being trapped in a room with your girlfriend's born-again older brother. All these lil' theater-club boogers sing about is going to AA and being sad."
"Sad? SAD?" exclaimed the huge man. "You were in here last week pumping the jukebox full of spare change, forcing us to hear that godforsaken goth-metal shit you love so much. The Brooklyn idiots who sound like Lurch boo-hooing over his lost prom date. I’d rather listen to one of those ultrasonic sound weapons the Japanese used to make Marines shit their pants."
The fourth man at the high table — a broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded guy with glasses and long dark hair, who had up until that point been sitting with his face in one hand like a weary father listening to his children squabble over toys for the hundredth time — looked up sharply and pointed his finger at the looming orange-haired creature.
"You better watch it, Y.J. Jones," he said. "Don't you dare insult Type O Negative. Peter Steele had more balls than any of these hipster shitbirds put together."
"Rex is, as always, a man of wisdom and culture," Reina said, nodding respectfully to the bespectacled figure. "Unlike the noise pollution currently oozing from that jukebox, Type O Negative is not about being a gutless loser who cries too much. It is about sacrificing yourself on the altar of passion. Finding something beautiful, and letting it kill you. It is not background music for wispy-haired dweebs who wear $100 pearl-snap button-downs and play the mandolin."
"Yeah, yeah, we've all read your little newsletters,(1) Reina," said Y.J., unlit cigarette still dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth. "There's plenty of good country songs these days. You just won't give them a chance."
"I've given 'em plenty of chances," Reina replied. "They just keep begging for more. Anyone or anything that needs that many second chances doesn't deserve a first one."
Cat was getting hungry, and he'd spotted the guy who looked like a cook a few more times now.
"Does this place have a kitchen?" he asked.
Martha nodded absently. "Yeah, more or less," she said, "but don't order food here."
"It can't be that bad," Cat said.
"You don't want what's cooking back there," Martha replied, frowning. "I'll make you dinner at my place."
At those words, an electric thrill of excitement shot up Cat's spine. He tried to read Martha's expression, to confirm she meant for him to spend the night with her, but she was no longer looking his direction. He turned to follow her gaze.
Martha's eyes were locked on two elderly women seated side-by-side at the end of the bar. Their gray heads were turned towards Martha, returning her stare. Both of their eyes shifted to Cat for a long moment, then back to Martha.
Slowly, one of the old women nodded — just once.
Cat suddenly felt desperate for an excuse to move, or say something. Anything to break the dense silence that hung over the table.
On the jukebox, Jason Isbell finished singing "Speed Trap Town," then launched into the first rolling bars of "Tupelo." A collective groan went up.
"ANOTHER ONE?" Reina bellowed.
Cat felt a surge of courage. He took a swallow of beer and stood up, facing the masked figure across the room.
"I'm the one who played it, so you can take it up with me," he called, raising his voice to be heard over the din. "This is a damn fine song. What do you know about country music?"
A hush fell. Cat heard a snicker from somewhere. Reina stepped from her chair onto a nearby table.
"I know that Conway Twitty did not sing a hundred ballads about how he'd be eating his woman's pussy from the back until his dentures fell apart just for these limp-dicked dweebs" — she pointed at the jukebox — "to churn out drippy songs about how love isn't worth putting in honest work for. Spiritually empty music for lazy cowards who are scared of pain and afraid of being alive."
Everyone turned to look at Cat, waiting on his reply.
"Have you ever even listened to the song you're complaining about?" Cat asked, after a second's hesitation. "'Tupelo' is beautiful. It's about a man feeling trapped where he is and finding hope in his plans to escape."
"Ex-fucking-actly," the dark figure shot back. "A lullaby for born losers who think the cure for life's ills is to pick up and run somewhere else. Like all their worst problems aren't on the inside of their own fuckin' heads."
Y.J. Jones emitted a sound like an approaching train's horn, and pulled at what was left of his ginger hair.
"I AM SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS," the big man screamed. "Yes, Reina, that's the whole goddamn point. Have neither of you heard of an unreliable narrator?"
Cat glanced back toward his table. Martha was looking at him, half-smile once again blooming on her pretty face. Impulsively, he reached down and grabbed her hand.
"May I have this dance?" he said.
He didn't wait for an answer before pulling Martha to her feet.
"Is this place always like this?" he asked, whirling her around. The explosive bickering continued around them, with half the assembled crowd joining in on the argument. The one called Rex shouted at them to settle the fuck down, and for Reina to get off the table.
"More or less," Martha said, resting her head on Cat's shoulder. "But that's Big River for you. Too much or not at all, this town."
"I can't say I love it," Cat laughed, "but it's not too bad if it's got you."
He could smell the whiskey on her breath as she turned to kiss him, gently, once.
Later, as he followed the tail lights of Martha's ancient Oldsmobile down the dark back roads to her place, Cat realized that he'd never even bought her a drink.
INTERLUDE: The Bound Man
He woke up on the kitchen floor.
Everything hurt. It always did. He could hardly remember when it hadn't. He belonged to pain now.
The kitchen wasn't the worst spot to fall asleep. The oven, left on overnight, lent him a little warmth. But dust was blowing in on the cold wind whistling under the back door; it ground against the greasy floor tiles as he pushed himself to his feet.
He stumbled out of the kitchen and into the bathroom, where he braced himself for more agony. Leaning against the wall, he gritted what was left of his teeth and tried not to scream. There was blood in his piss again; it burned like an oil fire. He could taste blood in his mouth, too.
He had his first clear thought of the morning, his first of every day:
Maybe I'll die.
It wasn't a thought with much emotion behind it. Just a fleeting hope, the way some people think, "Maybe I'll win the lottery."
Lurching back into the kitchen, he pulled off his clothes and threw them into a canvas bag, then tried to clean himself up. Standing on the big drain in the tile floor next to the sink, he held the sprayer nozzle over his head, letting the steaming water run through his limp hair and down over his discolored, weeping flesh.
The water was hot, too hot. He barely noticed.
She had brought someone new last night. An out-of-town guy.
A stranger.
Maybe he would come back, or bring friends. Someone who might listen to him, be able to get him to a hospital. That's where he needed to be — the hospital. They couldn't say "no" if you were really sick, and he was about as sick as it was possible for a person to be.
From the bite on his leg — he tried not to think about the bite — the infection had spread in dark purple tendrils, slithering up his knee and thigh, then into his abdomen. Blood poisoning, he knew. He'd seen it before, back in his good old bad days. A buddy shot up with the same needle one too many times, and the result had looked something like this. Like a black sun with a seething red and yellow mass of infection at its heart, dark rays stretching across his flesh and burning all they touched.
Blood poisoning was supposed to kill you fast. But it had been weeks, maybe months, and he was still here. And the rot was still spreading. Through his veins, into his bones. Everywhere.
By the time the infection had set in, he'd already realized it was no use trying to drive to the emergency room. No vehicle would take him off the property. Something always happened; the engine gave out, or the wheels fell off. Three broken-down cars out in the parking lot testified to that.
He'd been sleeping at work for a couple weeks when the first car died. His mom had kicked him out again, and he'd run out of second chances everywhere else. It wasn't a bad arrangement, at first. There was food, toilets to piss in, a floor to sleep on, TVs to watch after everyone else had gone home. He felt like he was getting away with something, a feeling he enjoyed.
If anyone realized he'd been camping out here, they didn't mention it. Nobody talked to him much these days, or even acknowledged him so long as the food came out of the kitchen on time. He made attempts to spark up conversation or ask for a ride, but people just looked at him blankly, made some generic statement like "not sure" or "we'll see," and wandered off.
And then, one night, the bite.
He tried not to think about the bite.
He'd given up on trying to fix his car or steal a new one, and decided it was time to walk out. Walk and keep on walking, start knocking on familiar doors until he found someone who would answer. Find a couch to sleep on, a working telephone, a friend who would still talk to him.
He was done with this place. He was tired of feeling trapped somewhere he barely seemed to exist. Just a ghost, haunting the little kitchen during the day, watching bad shows on the big bar TV while he sullenly smoked weed at night. It was time to move on, find someplace or someone new to take him in.
But in the muddy ditch at the edge of the parking lot, it was waiting.
This place wasn't done with him.
He finished spraying off, rivulets of fetid water circling the floor drain, and grabbed clean work clothes from a gym bag under the sink. He pulled them on gingerly; even the soft fabric of his T-shirt made his rotting skin scream.
He heard the deep "wooomph" sound of a cooler door being opened and closed, then the fuzzy chattering of a TV being switched on and turned to the morning news.
Bruce was here, setting up the bar for the morning.
Time to start making breakfast.
FOOTNOTES
1) Everyone in town was aware of Reina's "little newsletters," the running commentary on news, events, and culture Reina had been insistently publishing for many years. Originally, this was in the form of frequent letters to the editor and call-ins to local radio shows, as well as stacks of flyers stuffed in mailboxes, glued on poles, left on barroom tables, and occasionally nailed pointedly to front doors. This widely-despised onslaught of paper communiqués slowed to a trickle once Reina discovered that people would read virtually anything so long as it was posted on the Internet. Ever since, she had published her various tracts and screeds on a discreet social media page and, eventually, a website.(2) Almost everyone in town hated that too, although they all read it every day, just in case.
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2) From an entry dated Oct. 20, 2023:
"This season always turns my heart to Type O Negative.
"Their masterwork was 'October Rust,' and that album's opening track, "Love You To Death," is as fine a summation of Peter Steele and his life's work as we could hope to get.
"Like most of Type O's songs, 'Love You To Death' is beautiful and earnest, in a way that probably feels corny if you don't know or care just how far love can push the human soul. There are no allusions or metaphors or clever little tricks in here to make the medicine go down. There's just one person, consumed by his passion for another — holding back nothing, exposing everything, hoping only that his love might be accepted.
"Peter Steele was an artist of that particular experience — a complicated man who made brave music about how beautiful and awful life can be, particularly if you are the type of person whom emotion takes to its furthest extremes. Lesser men write songs about how they'll love you forever; Peter Steele wrote songs about what forever really means. To Pete, forever meant even after you started hating him, even when it hurt, even when it was humiliating, even after death. The boys in Whiskey Myers might serenade your casket, but Peter Steele would do black magic to resurrect you (and write a song about it). Billy Joel might love you "just the way you are," but Peter Steele would love you no matter what time of the month it was (and write a song about it).
"The depth of feeling depicted in 'Love You To Death' is flattering and affirming, if you're the subject of it. But when it's YOU who loves people like this — so much it makes you afraid you'll scare them away — it's an agony that can't be compared to anything other than death."
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