Cumberland Blues

Frank Foxtrotter put on his boots like he did every morning. Frank’s job at Gimmler Foods, Inc. hadn’t changed, despite the thirty years he’d given them. But Frank never complained. He was an 8th generation Foxtrotter from the Cumberland Valley. His ancestors worked the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CVRR) for next to nothing. They were heroes.

Frank felt far away from his feet and the longer he lingered, the further he became. He wondered if this might be the end. Marnie’s voice startled him out of his stupor.

Marnie, dressed in a matching robe and nightie set, magenta with pink trim lace, stood at the doorway to their bedroom with makeup she’d rushed to put on while Frank still slept, as if she’d woken up that way. Her perfume, hocked by Julie Knight, the latest celebrity riding the wave of her fifteen minutes, filled the air, and it was hideous.

“Do you want some coffee? I made cinnamon rolls.”

Marnie prayed he’d look up, that he’d return to her from the faraway, sunken place he increasingly found himself; a place that robbed Marnie of even the stolen moments before work and just before bed that weren’t filled with sports, booze, and dirty dishes. There were always dirty dishes.

Frank sighed and declined in the same breath. He knew Marnie was there, but he couldn’t face her. How could she want someone like him, a man who didn’t know himself and who was beginning not to remember where he was in the space-time matrix? In the eye of Frank's mind, Marnie embarrassed herself with her lewd behavior, standing there in the doorway, scantily clad, begging for attention from a shell of a man.

“You better put somethin’ on ‘fore Jimmy sees you like that.” Frank brushed past Marnie in the doorway and put on his coat, facing the door and away from her. Marnie’s eyes watered.

“F-F-Frank?” Frank looked at her. “Yes, Marnie?” As if he didn’t know.

Marnie, startled by his sudden attention, said nothing for what felt like a long while. A bird flew into the window in the living room, which happened often, because Marnie didn’t have a job and so was always polishing the windows to make them clear as day, to make them seem as if they weren’t there at all. Frank seized the opportunity.

“Have a good day, Marnie. See you when I get home.” Marnie closed her eyes and tried to forget.

Jimmy Foxtrotter was asleep on his bathroom floor near the end of the hall waiting for the water to get hot, a time that came to pass 20 minutes earlier. Marnie banged on the bathroom door. “Jimmy!”

She tried to open the door, but it was locked. “Jimmy! Wake up! You’re going to be late!”

Jimmy pushed himself off the floor and stumbled into the shower, where he laid down again. Marnie changed into some sweatpants, tied her hair up, washed off her face, turned on the television to the national morning news, which was filled with information that was about as intellectually nutritional as a marshmallow, plopped on the couch barefoot, and sipped her vodka-water, which she disguised as water, out of her sports bottle with a pink rubber straw sticking out of it. Next Up: Can You Guess Which is Designer and Which is Discount? Designer versus Discount Next! The distractions are endless.

∆

It was a foggy morning in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and the cloudlike substance hung in the air as if it were magnetized to the ground; thick, like a belch after a hearty plate of chicken fried steak, extra gravy.

Frank turned on the radio and found Merle Haggard as soon as he got into his fifteen-year-old Chevy, a maroon, rusted, and trusted, truck that was Frank’s only safe space where he felt like he could breathe. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw nothing but his blue eyes looking back, the same blues that used to beg his momma and daddy for a nickel for some candy from the corner store, the same one he was driving past now. It was the same boy inside that man. Frank smiled at the thought of his innocence, but his sentimentality was quickly abated by his next thought, which was that he couldn’t remember the last time that Jimmy did anything but look at that damn computer in the basement. Fuckin’ failure.

Frank dreaded going to work at Gimmler Foods, Inc., the local meat processing plant, which did business with River Country Farms, the local dairy manufacturer. One of the main functions of Frank’s job was to transport steers, or castrated juvenile cows, to the Gimmler plant for their processing. Upon the steers’ arrival at the plant, they did not get a free-range meadow where they frolicked until it was time for them to be shot in the face so that the rest of us can have a cheap burger. Frank didn’t like it, but he did it because he was the only one in the company with the balls to corral, shuttle, and look in the eye the animals the rest of the employees exterminated, cut up, ground, and packaged.

And everything was fine until about a year ago when a new general manager, Walter Kolinski, came in and started making demands and trying to fix things that weren’t broken.

“He’s got vision. He’s got his M-B-A.” The golden letters. The regional manager, Roy Buchanan, tried to placate the weary veterans of Gimmler, and the young folk ate up the story like free uppers on Wall Street. But Frank, the most senior employee at Gimmler, wasn’t about to let this Kolinski fellow change the way he did his job. Frank was just five years’ shy of retirement with benefits, so though he remained a skeptic, he kept his head low and his foot from kicking the beehive.

∆

Jimmy looked at himself in his foggy bathroom mirror fifteen minutes after his interview was supposed to start.

This was the third interview in as many months that Jimmy missed for one reason or another. He always found a way. The first time, for a job as a runner for a law firm, was easy—he faked sick. The second, for a job as a busboy at the local Brie’s, was harder. He pretended to faint from the sweltering heat of the summer before his mother pushed him out of her Camry. His fall onto the asphalt burned, but he did make not a sound lest his cover be blown. Marnie beat herself up about his fall, and Jimmy never told her the truth. But this time, he hadn’t an excuse. He just locked himself in his bathroom and didn’t go.

Jimmy pushed the mirror and it popped open. Inside, six bottles, all prescribed to Jimmy, made their attempts at seduction as he narrowed his choice. He was a cowboy on his way through town, stopping at the saloon, and the women of the night batted their eyelashes and raised their skirts. Clonazepam. Jimmy popped the childproof cap off with one hand. When his dad got home, he’d want to be as far out of his body as possible this side of death.

∆

Frank’s truck rattled as it crossed the abandoned CVRR. That meant Frank had five more minutes of bliss, of Hank Williams, of living by the laws he’d cast across his own land. He closed his eyes for just a moment, drinking his freedom in until he was satiated with the stuff. Since Frank refused coffee from Marnie, he wasn’t quite awake yet, which is why he didn’t see the bull standing in the middle of the road until he was about twenty yards away from it, just standing there, perpendicular, chewing on some growth he’d plucked from the side of the road that he’d found next to the previous grass he’d grazed, next to a fence that needed mending, staring directly at Frank and gnawing in a slow, slow rhythm. Frank swerved. Frank hit the ditch.

∆

Frank’s truck made a sound that Frank didn’t like and fumes rose from beneath the hood. “Fuck!” Frank hit the steering wheel with each demonic expulsion. “Fuck! Fuck!” Frank turned around. The bull was gone. Frank wandered up and down the road a bit, unharmed by his dive into the ditch, and searched for the bull. Nothing. Nowhere. Not a trace.

Frank went back to his truck and took out his cell phone and tried Marnie. No answer. Her phone was charging in the kitchen, and she was busy giggling at the banter between the middle-aged cohosts with moderate sexual chemistry. It was innocent, but enough for a bored housewife to be entertained, especially when lubricated. Frank tried Jimmy, but the sight of "Dad" on his phone sent Jimmy for a tailspin because his father knew. He must have known.

Frank calculated how far he was from Gimmler’s. He reckoned it was about a mile and a half from where he stood. Last week, Kolinski made a company-wide statement that anyone who was late or left early had to answer to him, and if their answer wasn’t satisfactory, their pay would be docked 20% on their next paycheck. And if it happened twice… “Well, let’s just say: Don’t let it happen twice.” Kolinski was all of twenty-nine years old. Frank was not about to cower to him.

∆

Frank arrived ten minutes late. Kolinski made a scene. “Now, Frank. You know better than to think you’re above the rules, don’t you?” Kolinski turned to the rest of the workers, whose ears perked. “Everyone else was here this morning. You don’t get special treatment just because you’re an old man.” Kolinski proceeded to call Frank out in front of everyone. “What’s your story, Frank?”

“There was a bull.” Frank proceeded with caution. “A couple of miles up 114.” Kolinski threw down his clipboard. “114?! You think I’m a stupid kid. Don’t you, Frank? You know there’s no dairy farms within twenty miles of this place.” Kolinski got in Frank’s face and pushed him on the chest with his forefinger. “Try again.” Frank restrained himself and looked to his right. Kolinski pressed harder. “Or are you having memory problems? You know, that happens at your age. Maybe we should take your keys.” Kolinski swiped for Frank’s keys. Frank dodged and then stared at Kolinski with those blues, a snake eyeing its prey. Kolinski flinched. Frank looked around, knowing he was done. Everyone was watching.

“There’s only room for one bull here, Kolinski. It ain’t you.” Frank punched Kolinski in the face. When Kolinski came to, Frank was gone, as if he were never there at all. Nothing. Nowhere. Not a trace.

∆

Frank got home by bus and found Marnie passed out on the couch. He quietly slipped back out the kitchen door after lifting Marnie’s keys off the counter.

Marnie’s red Hyundai Sonata idled in the GIANT parking lot for thirteen minutes while Frank racked his brain for the last time he’d been to the grocery store. It was Jimmy’s 11th birthday. Eight years. It had been eight years.

Frank came home loaded down with steak and shrimp, potatoes, all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and cheeses, beer, wine for Marnie, and those sugar cookies with icing Jimmy loved so much as a kid.

Marnie jumped up, drool caked to the side of her face, hair mashed to one side, lines from the couch imprinted upon her, and one eye open more than the other. Frank spoke to her softly, kindly, like he did when they first met.

“Hey, baby.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you.” Marnie was speechless.

Frank knocked on Jimmy’s basement door. “Son, I got those cookies you love. Come on up when you’re done down there.” Jimmy waited for a question about the interview, but it didn’t come.

Frank made love to his wife that night like a man back from the brink of death.