Love, Knuckles, and Melody Genesis

Love, Knuckles, and Melody Genesis

C.B. Smith

This book is work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Boo McNutt

Copyright © 2010 by C.B. Smith

Published by M.H. Dartos

at Smashwords

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*****

I'ma just gettin' to wakin' up rubbin' the sleepy goobers from my eyes and such and I knows I just gotta tell you thisere story so's I better git to it. Here's how thangs is, my name is Cord. Not by birth but by choice. The way I sees it this is my life so's I'll live it my way with a name of my choosin'. Of course there ain't nobody whut sees me eye to eye on this view. Well, I got me some choice answers for them types. I'm what you might call a misunderstood severely abused type.

By now you may be wondering what a happening hillbilly feller like me does when he's not doing other thangs that some people say are important. Well, I'll make it easy on you. I'll tell you that what this happening feller does is hang with the only other happening feller he knows. A happening feller that most folks would agree and say, Yeah, he's a happenin feller.

Hargis Mellow.

He's a big time football star at Chillamore Central High School. Gets all the girls, invitations, special thangs that stars get. I don't know why we ended up being friends. Hell, most folks like him look at me sideways and put two fingers in their mouth like they's hurlin'. Not him though, good ole' Haggis. Yeah, you guessed it right. Only I can CALL him Haggis. Anybody else whut tries it will get a fistful of knuckles.

So, like I was sayin', most days we go to his basement and shoot the beeswax 'bout all thangs. It helps that we growed up next door to each other. We've been best friends since we were knee high to a grasshopper two year old skedaddlers.

Today we're in our own special corner of the basement-a corner that keeps getting' bigger by and by-building our soon to take over the architectural world soda can city which we've named Tin Towers. I just popped out with that name and Haggis said, Yeah baby! Cool name.

We've been collecting soda cans from our soda drinking and sometimes we collect cans from differnt places.

Like behind old Lomack's Deli on Garnett Street. They always have their dumpsters overflowing with cans so sometimes we dive in and grab us a whole bunch. The last time we did that we got so many cans-after three trips one after the other-that we were able to add in one day a monster sized football stadium with a matching ice cream parlor for big ice cream junkies. Now we're working on hugimundo skyscrapers.

I was thankin that maybe we should name one of the skyscrapers Tin Towers instead of the city. But the more I thought about it, the less important it sounded. I mean, why can't a city be called Tin Towers? Nothin wrong with that.

'N if'n you thanks they is…well…I s'pose y'know my answer to that by now.

But I'm thankin' we's past the point of being interested in some stupid tin can city when there's bigger fish to fry in this town. Let me tell you somethin' to catch ya up 'n stuff. This girl. Melody. Sweetest little twilley y'ever did see. Now I ain't one to go hog wild callin' 'n such but I s'pose ever feller's got his weakness and all. And I'm here to tell you she be mine. Weakness that is. Other'nat she don't even know I exist. Kinder. I reckon she knows me like everybody else at Chillamore Central. Stinky Rimky: The kid who's never parted from stink enough to get lonely. The kid who smelly and him go together like a nose and boogers.

Somethin' like that.

Yeah, as a kid, a little ankle biter nose pickin' ass wipe, I was known for a certain strong smell that seemed to linger no matter what. But that was a long long time ago. I's much differnt now. Heck, I even change my underbritches once a week now. Useta could not change it for dang near one month. So opinions is laggin' the turn of thangs. And that's a cryin' shame really. To thank that all this prejudicial dumb ass thankin's standin' between me and that girl whut may be my one and only. One day. Maybe one day far aways. But I cain't get m'self all down and slumpy over that kinder thankin'. Ain't doin' no one no good nohow.

No kawhillickers.

So's I just go on like'n I don't thank about her anyways 'cause there's no other way to be. For me that is. Good ol,' greasy ol',smelly ol' Cord Rimshank. D'you believe them sombitches calls me Rimjob? Believe you me when I catch 'em tellin' that trash tawk I get a quick high tail it word round to ol' Haggis. He shows 'em what's what.

But it ain't like he's my bodyguard or nothin'. He just don't like people tawkin' bull puckey 'bout me no more'n I like it! Still it don't help me none with light of my heart, Melody. Most days I feel lower than a whale's belly and let me tell you that's mighty low.

*****

With that huge balloon head that idiot gets tired enough having to hold on tight to it so it don't float away. Then he spends ever minute chasing his pea size brain around that hideously large Hindenburg and not only does he never catch his creepy runaway brain he gets totally tuckered out.

That there's a good name for him. Tucker.

Him and Rimjob make quite a pair.

Pair of what?

You know this crummy city of Wa'tay is too small for both of them at once. Seems to me one of them has to leave. And look at that Shanise girl. Melody's groupie friend who's always with her. Another beauty! A city full of sucky shit wads.

This little chitty chat is too much for me to pass up. 'N I was jus goin' to history class when of a hey what I run across these never do goods so's I jus gotta ask em.

"And who's the one to make one of 'em leave? You willow bush?

The three bubbas turn their scraggly heads to me. All at once. Like monkeys.

Um. I think he's talking to you Willoughby.

C'mon Cord man. Wasn't saying somebody should make one of them leave. Was just saying one of them has to leave. I was just saying.

When they takes to callin' me Cord man, tryin' to cozy up to me, I knows I caught'em tongue trippin' in trash town. But they get all like, Warn't doin' nothin' Cord man. Nothin' at all. It's jus way too much fun to pass up the chance to squeeze 'em like big ol' gooey zits.

Yeah well you best keep it that way, I says.

You threatening me Rimky? says Willoughby.

No. I'm jus sayin,' I says, walkin' away, maybe skippin' a bit, leavin' 'em to wonder all on they ownsome. Good for the goose good for the gander.

Them fellers is on a hot tin barrel if'n they get to wonderin' why a feller like Hargis would even care to be near a feller like me, a feller who'd jus as soon kick ya as look at ya. I don't know neither. Twas a mystery to me even cuz we growed up next door to each other. Kinder died in the shed friends.

That's cow chip 'n all. But these're fellers who'll never know the blissin' joy in takin' in huge gulps of air filled with the smell of somethin' so rich, so foul, so oh-my-god-what-is-that-smell, that it makes yer heart dance a double two step in celebration. Ol' Haggis though, he knows this joy.

I s'pose he's a might tilted to one side that way.

Sometimes we'd borrow his Pa's car and drive out of the city, straight out till the suburbs became country, out till the road we was on give out, until we reached some place we'd never been and would never recognize in the daytime, listening to rock music on ROCK with the windows down if'n it was warm, smellin' the toxic plant smell of chunk marshy bottoms where the organic life is so thick it reminds ya of skunk.

We had to be in motion, on the move; it was a need like the need to breathe. I felt I was suffocatin' and waitin' to get out of Tennessee, out of the whole Southeast. To go West. Somehow. Someway. Someday. To begin a new life, like a do over. That was what we tawked about a whole bunch. Me in my fug you, excitable way and Hargis in his calm and smooth way.

A new life.

And sometimes. Only sometimes. We met girls out there. Ones whut wanted always to get inside the world of Haggis and run screaming from the world of Cord. A mucked up world of beauties and boneheads though I never did reckon who was who.

You're kinda malcontent, Cord. You know? Nothing's never good enough for you. Girls don't like that. Catch more flies with sugar.

Don't care about no fuggin' flies. But he's forgettin' the pull. Sometimes yer hot and sometimes yer not. Trouble is the game is always fixed for his side. Him bein' always hot and me bein' always NOT. And I ain't sayin' I maybe cain't use no fixin'

I'm jus sayin.'

When you got the kinder girl attractin' juju that rolls with Hargis, luck don't come into it.

Never.

For me it was always more the odd and creepy. When you meet me the first thang you'll notice, the one thang that jumps out at you like a cornered swamp rat is them larger than small freckles above 'n below m' eyes which I do doubly swear come to me by my cousin, Sharma.

I 'member it like a sour mash dream from my innocent grade school days...

Mama's always tellin' me I should visit my Auntie Cage and m'cousin Sharma. 'Ceptin' when I shows up to see 'em in their li'l swamp house cousin Sharma starts to kissin' on me like a love stung bush snake! I'm never goin here again.

And I knows all that dang kissin' done me in with these here freckles.

Some females are ready to mate for thangs more abstract than food and trailer homes.

I s'pose I might could say Sharma's a li'l bit this way, a li'l bit that way, a li'l bit WHY?!!

*****

I didn't begin to live until I died. I mean when you sees your name in the death files, what is called them Obicharies, it's a good time to get to livin' less you's fixin' to get to dyin'. Maybe I shoulda had me that second bowl of Snap Krackle Pop!

I must be sleepwalkin' or somethin'.

What happened was what's called a near miss with a rampaging 12 wheeler on a freeway. My blood raced. My pulse quick stepped. My head beaded. The wind tore off the side of my truck. Luckily, it survived.

My lucky truck.

Warn't me though. 'N I don't even have no TRUCK!

Thissere was jus my real world o' crazy don't make no sense chum bucket.

So's I falled asleep at the table, woke up with thissere paper stuck to my face and when I peeled it off and looked at it I see's my name all perty like right there. In the obicharies. 'N I near shit m'self. But I'm wakin' up. All hopped up on sugar. Falling asleep and wakin' up again. Weird stuff, huh? Then I see's my name in there. Sees it and sees it and I'm knowin' I must be seein' thangs wrong like. So I look at it again real close and see my face'd smooshed on that there paper and smeared the words and warn't my name at all. Was Curtis Ramekin. Don't even know the poor dumb ass.

Guess this's what you'd call a bad beginning to a bad going day.

What's up with that face man? You're looking like...hell, I don't even know what.

Haggis had a way of just opening up the door and walking right in. That's how friends do each other. I jus wished he'd knock ever now and again.

Yeah. Just saw my name in them obicharies and thought I was dead and shit. Got my motor runnin' I tell ya.

I show him the paper and he starts ha-ha-ha-in'.

Does kinda look like it. Man, does that suck or what?

First I gotta get this paper and ink off my face. Then…hey, whatchou wanna do?

I dunno. What do you want to do?

I don't know. How about you?

Me neither. I got nothing.

Yeah. I'm dead so's I got no idears.

Well, I was kinder dead a few minutes ago, now I'm not dead no more. Idears come slow for us almost dead fellers.

Get that shit off your face dead boy and let's roll.

With my pa working late shifts at the mill, it's almost like living alone. He's gone when I wake up or just dragging himself in and when I get back from school he's either sleeping or drinking with friends. It's a full life for him. I got kinder the same schedule only...differnt.

Ridin' out to someheres else always rings my chimes. Sets me to mental trippin', A new place. A new life. A new world. Sometimes I get to thankin' that mebbe ain't nothin' else for me here. These here parts I been hangin' around in since the beginnin' of my life's days. It's not so