Stacey

by Louis Gallo

This goes back to the Pleistocene and I'm all of thirteen in the first year of junior high, a hive full of thugs and hoodlums and insane maniacs where I definitely don't belong but my parents don't know any better and say I need experience so you can imagine the everyday terror like when I see one kid pull a .38-revolver from his pocket and brandish it around screaming, it's loaded, but there's bliss too, in band class when I see Stacey who is so far out of my league it's like glimpsing the edge of the universe though in fact she sits right next to me, second chair flute to my first, and she's a fully developed woman at thirteen and everyone agrees queen of the school and head majorette and twirler and dancer and whatever her reasons and against all odds she likes me and I of course adore her and when the band director Mr. Gendarvis taps the podium with his wooden stick to start a Sousa march she presses her thigh firmly against mine and I can hardly stand it and hope Mr. Gendarvis doesn't notice what's happening to me though how could he not? The whole class period, our thighs fused together, imagine, even with that heavy Cor Jesu senior ring glued to her finger with wax, her boyfriend, Tommy, from the Catholic school, rumored the toughest motherfucker in all Gentilly, you don't mess with Tommy for any reason, much less his girlfriend, and yet . . . so this goes on for a few years and I'm finally sixteen with a learner's permit and I borrow my grandfather's golden Imperial with its legendary wings and spend five hours washing it for him and in return I can take Stacey out on a date in it so I rub every smudge from every window with Windex and scrub the white walls with Brillo pads until my fingers bleed, that's how obsessed I am and, by the way, Stacey has broken up with Tommy and has chosen (that's exactly the word, chosen) a new boyfriend, Joey, and Tommy beats the crap out of him right in the school yard with everybody gathered round to watch like some Roman spectacle and Joey returns a few days later with black eyes, a broken jaw and his face swollen like a pumpkin but he doesn't care because now he's got Stacey and he's a hero by default and they walk through the corridors like royalty and I wonder if he will beat the crap out of me because I'm taking her out in my grandfather's Imperial, which is really happening, despite Joey, and either he knows or doesn't care because I don't care. All I care about is Stacey, my first real love, my goddess . . . and I drive her out to the Point, this meager peninsular at West End that pokes out into Lake Pontchartrain and we pass the ancient light house, where the Point stops, and there's space for about fifty cars where everybody makes out and I've wanted to do this for three torturous years so I slide over on the seat and wrap my arm around her shoulders and she flicks away her Salem and I press my lips onto hers and I love it but know the kiss is no good, not really a kiss, because she keeps her lips to herself, clenched, and just sort of puts up with me messing around with them with my mouth and, oh Jesus, three torturous years, those thighs fused to mine in band, her sweet smile, her everything. But she's just putting up with it because she definitely does like me, I swear to that, but maybe not the way she liked Tommy or likes Joey, which sort of pisses me off because I just don't get it and I pull away and slide down low and rest my head on the seat and sigh really loud though I'm ignited inside and don't know what to do or say and she says nothing but lights up another Salem and asks if I want one but I say no, I don't smoke, and I didn't then, and suddenly I feel nauseous—her lips taste like ashes, and yet I will kiss ashes, lick ashes, eat ashes, smear my face with ashes, vomit ashes for more of her.

Louis Gallo’s work has appeared or will shortly appear in Southern Literary Review, Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth, Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review, bioStories, and many others. Chapbooks include The Truth Change, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

Legs

by Lou Gallo

When they cut off my Uncle Henry’s legs I was off smoking weed with a girl who said she was the great-great-great niece of President William Henry Harrison, the one who never made it to the White House. I remember an efficiency rank with cat piss and stale Purina, a green cotton spread on the mattress, Southern Comfort, vanilla candles, and Jim Morrison in the background, her favorite, though I inclined toward Jackie Wilson or Ben E. King. I’d hate to think we reached the sublime right as that blade dug into my uncle’s bones—must have smelled grisly like when dentists drill into some sick molar.

He was a big man who would capture you at reunions and boom the secrets of direct marketing, mail order, and free advertising. My cousins and I tried not to meet his eye, but he always cornered Sandy because at the time she had those new breasts, which he always managed to brush against. Back then it disgusted us, though now I think I understand; I was out trying to do the same thing, not with Sandy, although she too crossed my mind. He just seemed so old and his teeth had turned into kernels of corn. He had a wife, of course, my mother’s sister, but aunts and mothers don’t figure when it comes to love you can call love.

The decline began when a drunk broadsided Uncle’s van and they had to pry him out with crowbars and two-by fours. A miracle he survived, everybody said. Broken ribs, two crushed legs, spleen damage—there’s more, always more, but at some point you lose count. We saw him a few times buzzing around in a wheelchair with two massive casts on his legs. The doctors discovered diabetes during their probe and that’s what finally ruined him, not the accident. His skin started to swell and blacken with gangrene long after the broken bones had mended.

Years later I saw him out at his ranch-style house in Picayune, where my family and I drove for a mercy visit—even I dimly aware that a finale had commenced. He slumped in the same wheelchair with a green shawl hiding the missing legs. He didn’t talk much anymore but sometimes he’d laugh at a joke or groan. Aunt Ruth said he had high fever all the time and felt horrible. He no longer tried to corner anybody and his voice had shriveled to distant static. He didn’t even notice Sandy, who’d come along for the ride. I saw him pick at a tray of cheese cubes stabbed with party toothpicks. Mostly, he sat in the corner and stared at some game show on television.

Before the funeral I had too much to drink. My sister, cousins and I clumped together in a vestibule—I’d brought along a new girlfriend who smirked a lot as we made snotty comments about relatives we hated. Everyone wore black except us. We planned to invade the French Quarter soon as we could slip away from the wake. My mother had dragged me over to the casket to take a last look at the man who once spent an entire day locating a suitcase of mine; the railroad has lost it on my trip to New Jersey, where Uncle and his family lived before he retired back home to the south. It was easy and free staying with them while I spent my days and most of the nights prowling Manhattan. I never thanked my uncle for his trouble.

We headed straight for Bourbon Street. My cousins and sister disappeared soon enough and I wound up in Lafitte’s Blacksmith shop with Wanda, who smoked two cigarettes at once, white fangs dangling from the meat of her glossy violet lip. I drank vodka martinis until all the shitty things she said about life, love, politics, men and God shrank into the screech of some pitiful insect. But, God, she had gorgeous legs, chiseled, they seemed, right out of a vat of Coppertone. Someone started to plunk “I’m Walking” on the bar piano and patrons gathered round to sing.

Dimly, I heard Wanda call my uncle a pig. It was my fault. I‘d told her all the stories. But just then I felt pretty sorry for him. “You don’t know one God-damned thing,” I growled as the room spun. When I stood up to leave my knees quivered and I knew I was headed straight down before I got anywhere, faster than that dumb president who missed the White House or an old man with no legs.

Louis Gallo's work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Rattle, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review, Baltimore Review, Portland Review, Texas Review, storySouth, and Greensboro Review, among many other journals and anthologies. His chapbooks include The Truth Changes and The Abomination of Fascination. Gallo was the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review. He teaches at Radford University.

Once

by Louis Gallo                                

Grandma told us that it officially began when he said he wanted a little boy sailor suit for his birthday. He said he always got new clothes on his birthday and holidays, like the crinkly seersucker on Easter when he made his communion or the striped flannel pajamas for Christmas. She had noticed signs all along but kept them to herself: he dropped things, forgot what day it was, couldn’t find his way to the bank or Southern Radio, where he practically lived. “Not all the time,” she said, blowing out some extra air so that her lips buzzed like a small motor, “just every now and then. But enough to worry me. I didn’t say anything because it would make him mad. He said he had too much to remember and the days were shorter.  ‘They’re stealing a little more time each day,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Who’s they?’ I asked. He just sighed and told me I knew what he was talking about.”

I remember the day of her announcement. We had finished Sunday lunch and were loitering at the table, picking at a little more crumb cake, a little more pecan pie, just sort of making pigs of ourselves. Grandpa left the room suddenly—he looked sort of dazed—and went for his nap. He didn’t tell the usual World War I stories or even excuse himself; he stood up, gazed at us as if he had never seen us before, and started out.  He looked skinny and fragile and his fingers trembled a little. We all knew something was wrong, except maybe my sister Ruthie, who was still too young.  Mom and Dad looked at each other with raised eyebrows. I had seen a few old people get skinny all of a sudden, like Uncle Ambrose, and they didn’t last long after that. Grandma came in from the kitchen, where she had taken some dishes, wiped her hands, and sat down in her husband’s chair. She had never done that before. Grandpa’s chair at the head of the table was sacred. 

“I have something to say,” she began, “and you’re not going to like it.”

“I think we know already, Ma,” Dad said. He looked sad as an old rag. Dad was devoted to his father.

She ignored him. “Grandpa is sick. His mind’s going. It’s like he’s daft. Yesterday he went out the door in his underwear.  He said he was driving up see Alphonse at Southern.  When I told him he needed to put on some clothes, he blew up, told me to mind my own business.  But he walked back into the bedroom and put on some clothes anyway. He stormed out of the house and slammed the door like I was his worst enemy.  Not ten minutes later he came back.

“‘Can’t find my keys’ is all he said and then sank into this very chair and stared at the wall. I don’t think he knew where he was. ‘Maybe we ought to see a doctor,’ I said.  Well, he understood that all right and exploded again. ‘I’m all right!’ he shouted and pounded the table. Then he belched—you know those big cochons he makes—and smiled and everything seemed normal again. Except his shirt was buttoned up wrong and he wore two different shoes on his feet. ‘Jake,’ I said, ‘I know you’re all right, but it wouldn’t hurt to see Dr. Mosby. You need to see him about your heart anyway.’  Well, he started to rant and rave about how I wanted to get rid of him and how I fed him the wrong food and it wasn’t him but the blood pressure medicine. Then he put his head down on the table and went to sleep. Just like that. So what I’m telling you all is that Grandpa is ill, and he needs to see Dr. Mosby, and I can’t do it all myself. I’m so stiff as it is.”

And then, for the first time in my life, I saw my grandmother cry. She twiddled with a linen napkin and wept softly. “He’s getting so old right before my eyes.”

“What’s the matter, Grandma?” Ruthie asked.

Grandma reached over with her gnarled fingers and patted Ruthie’s hand. “It’s ok, sweetheart,” she said, “your grandpa just needs to go to the doctor.”

“Is Grandpa ok?” Ruthie asked. She had not digested a bit of what her grandmother had said.

“I’ll make the appointment,” Dad said. “He’s not going to like it.”

“He’ll fight you and make you feel like scum,” Grandma said.

“Can I come too?” I asked.

Dad smiled. He looked older and seemed beaten down.  “No, Jakie,” he said, “it’s not a fun place to go.”

“But I don’t want Grandpa to be sick.”

“None of us do, Jakie,” Grandma said. “He’s an old man though. Old people are always sick.”

“Are you sick, Grandma?” Ruthie asked, as if suddenly she too knew the family had changed. 

“Oh, just my usual rheumatism. You know me. My feet hurt so much.”

And that’s the first time we heard that too. Grandma came from a long line of stalwart forebears who refused to complain about anything.  Their hands might be burned to char and they would remain dignified and poised and go on chatting as if valentines throbbed above their heads. If Grandma admitted that her feet hurt, they must have ached in a way none of the rest of us could stand for one minute, much less year after year.

I remember looking at the screen door. One edge of the mesh had come loose and had curled up at the joint. The metal latch hung down like a tiny anchor. Sunlight eased through lace curtains that had begun to dry rot. I felt massive forces at work, forces over which none of us had any control, and I stormed out of the room, out the door and plopped down on the concrete steps of the small porch. I tried to think about everything Grandma had said, but I couldn’t.  My mind had gone blank, maybe like my grandfather’s. I heard the bells gong over at St. Rosa de Lima. Honeysuckle and sweet olive wafted in the breezes. The tall wooden fence that separated Grandma’s house and the one next door looked soggy, gray and soft. Only a few years before I had climbed that fence with abandon. It dawned on me that I would never climb it again, nor did I want to climb it. Something new had begun, something I didn’t like and wanted to brush aside as if it didn’t count. But whatever was going on seemed inexorable. We had to live with it. And it would hurt and diminish us all.

 

Louis Gallo’s work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Southern Review, New Orleans Review, Baltimore Review, Portland Review, storySouth, and Sojourn, among many other journals and anthologies. He teaches at Radford University.