I’ve settled into my new life quite nicely. Waking up early is 10am. Late is dusk. The house is mine so Helen didn’t get it in the divorce, which was amicable because we didn’t have to see each other but once. Gotta love no fault divorce laws. The place has seen better days, but haven’t we all? I have a couple of nearly feral cats for roommates, which is cool because they help pick up the stray pizza crusts and clean the half-eaten plates. I keep waiting for the day when I come out into the kitchen and see the two of them with rubber gloves on working on dishes over the sink, giving me a look that says “I know we’re wild animals, but what’s your excuse?”

Clothes are whatever isn’t stained or still wet with beer, vomit, or a mixture of the two. I try not to spend too much time in the house, which doesn’t have much to do with the smell. It was a really sweet little place, and I remember how absolutely bursting with pride I was the day we bought it. I had a wife, I had a daughter, and now I owned property, like a real-life grownup. I had never really thought it was going to happen, but then one day, there I was. Homeowner.

Now I take a perverse kind of pleasure with how my own personal outlook has begun to affect my surroundings. What once was a simple of responsibility and stability is now a monument to giving up. It’s a small two bedroom, but it may as well be a one bedroom, because there’s one room I never go near anymore. It’s extra painful because her door is right across from my bedroom, and whenever I left the room, there it’d be, smiling at me with fairy stickers and big, puffy letters glued on the door that screamed “Monica” in soul-destroying cheerfulness.

After Helen left, I started sleeping on the couch, which is a nice way to say I just pass out there.

The place is mostly empty, as I never really got around to replacing the things that Helen took with her. The carpet still hasn’t quite given up the indents of the end-tables and fancy chairs and desks she insisted on getting, like its still waiting for them to come back, and it wants them to know they were missed.

Sure, I could move, but I’d have to pack the place up first, and that’d require thoughtfulness and decision making, and those are the province of functioning alcoholics.

I don’t know what to do with her things. I can’t just throw them out, but I can’t bear to look at them. Locking them in her room to think about what they’ve done is the best thing I can come up with.

The “not-moving” plan has the added bonus of being able to look at that corner every time I come or go. I’d be lying if I didn’t wake up on that very spot in the middle of the night some days, either from the cold or the heat, clean myself off and head into the house.

It’s ironic (or one of those things that you think is ironic but it’s technically not) that I wasn’t from here. I grew up in Pennsylvania and Helen and I met at Collier College, and after four years semi-wedded collegiate bliss, we moved here to Barnesville, because gosh darn it, we just loved this little neck of the woods. It was the perfect compromise. Not home to her, or home to me, but home to *us.*

There’s maybe 2,000 people in Barnesville, and they all exude that perfect Midwestern small-town charm that makes the tourists just grin and feel a little sadder that they sold out and moved to the suburbs. Aside from those of us that thought it’d be the perfect place to raise kids, it was a town full of people either were born to die there or born to get the hell out.

Monica was born just barely a year after we were married, which was six months after we graduated. I can look back and honestly not recognize the smiling go-getter that I was, so sure that nothing was going to stand in the way of my dreams. Heck, *our* dreams.

Barnesville was a jail of *ours* that I was never going to escape.

My brilliant idea was pizza. Somehow, Barnesville was just down the road from a bunch of perpetually lazy and stoned college kids and had nothing to show for it in the way of fast food or late night delivery. I was a lit major but even I sniffed gold, and within six months of graduation, my college buddy Ben and I opened the Pizza Barn. It was just on the outskirts of town towards campus, but just close enough to still be town, in, you guessed it, an old barn.

See? It’s funny because the town is called Barnesville. And yes, there are a shitload of barns.

So there I was, slinging pizza with my best friend at my side, my best girl at home, and a little one that I was keeping in frilly dresses and candy. Soon the place was a full-fledged restaurant, doing the whole Italian thing, with pizzas and salads and steak dinners and the whole nine yards. Ray ran the kitchen and I did the back room stuff, which it seemed to have an aptitude for. Planning ads, rolling the money over, making the good decisions. I was like the Houdini of the Pizza Barn.

It amazing how much all that stuff falls to the wayside when you see your kid get run over.

Ray told me to take all the time I needed to get over it, which turned out to be about 10 months. With a pained look on his face, he offered to buy me out, and not giving a shit, I accepted, getting a nice lump sum of cash in the bank so I could my attention to my new job: being miserable.

It was right around then when my little epiphany began to swirl itself into a full-fledged plan. If he hadn’t bought me out I would’ve offered to sell, because I knew this was going to be taking up all my time from now on.

If there was any other benefit to staying in that house, it was that it was walking distance to Sandy’s our delightful local dive bar. I’d become a near permanent fixture thee, showing up early and getting broomed out at closing time. I never spent any time there before, so it was a perfect place to not be reminded of little girls and empty houses. Centrally located in the sparse three block area that served as a downtown, Sandy’s was the Local Bar, and not the slightly more upscale Tourist/College Kid Bar, Donnell’s Pub, which had great success serving watered down drinks and having Karaoke. Every now and again a group of braver-than-smart Collier kids waltz in wanting to blend in with natives and find something interesting in blue collar working mans culture to write about. If the cold shoulders don’t give them the right idea, then the questioning by what ever drunk Alpha male happens to be in there will. They may be from my alma mater, but damn if it isn’t funny watching them squirm when they get asked “You a college boy?” Even I had sense enough stay out until I was a local, and even after all these years it’s provisional.

That morning I rose with my usual lack of enthusiasm and walked to Sandy’s. The last vestiges of winter were still lurking about, hoping someone would pay attention to them and put on a jacket, but there were plenty of folks milling about downtown. A couple of the skate kids with their permanently scowling baby-faces, a couple of tourists taking in the first buds of spring, and, of course, Chatty Cathy.

No one really knew what he real name was, or they just didn’t care enough to ask. She was one of those local figures that everyone knows, wandering around downtown muttering to herself, asking for cigarettes and, occasionally, spare change. Word was she had a healthcare worker that kept an eye on her, but from what I could tell she was doing alright. Some days she was more coherent than I was. She was pear shaped and perpetually slouched, hair matted down and cut unevenly.

“Hey HEY buddy,” she said as I passed.

“Hey,” I nodded, holding out a dollar for her.

She took it, nodded, and shuffled further down the street.

“Ain’t you a sweetheart.”

I shrugged, looking over my shoulder at Johnny. “It’s not like I need it.”

He cackled at that and put an arm around my shoulders. “Showin’ offs just gone get you in trouble, son.”

Johnny Wicker is another one of those local figures that everyone smiles and nods at, but when they do they keep their hands in their pockets and make sure their wallet is still there. Checking to make sure they aren’t missing any fillings isn’t unreasonable either. When he’s not holding down odd jobs, he’s holding court at Sandy’s, telling hunting or fucking stories. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. Near as I can tell, he’s about my age, but smoke, weathered skin from outdoor work and a lack of prominent teeth makes him look ten years my senior. I’ve felt his rough, calloused hands slap my face more times that I can count in the past year, almost always followed by a drunken hoot of laughter and a “I’m just playin with you, son.”

In my new existence, he’s my best friend.

It’s odd because we have nothing in common, aside from a love of drink, and thanks to my “fortune,” I keep him in a happy supply of it. He buys the occasional round, but for the most part I’m there to listen to his stories and have him chuckle at my College Boy ways. Or, even better, my Pizza Boy ways. My bringing of the Pie to Barnesville has, in some weird way, made me a local celebrity, which at first I’d laugh off but swell inwardly with pride. That was BC.

Before Corner.

Now it’s an irritation, because not only do people know me as Pizza Guy, but now I’m That Guy Whose Kid Got Run Over. I’ve waved of too many drinks and sympathetic shoulder claps than I can stand, but there’s only one person’s free round I didn’t dare wave off, and that was dear ‘ol Johnny Wicker.

It was last fall, just as the cold weather was settling in. Sandy’s was hopping with folks trying to keep warm and I was fast on my way to becoming a regular. Even Chatty Cathy was chilling in the back, rocking back and forth and holding a quiet conversation with her beer. I was slouched at the bar, pretending to watch the basketball game on the TV when I felt someone sit down next to me. When I saw it was Johnny I still had enough sense to be a little curious as to why, in a place full of plenty of people willing to give up their seat to him, he had graced yours truly with his presence. However, that sense had fought and lost a battle with alcohol and my new-found urge for self-destruction, so I didn’t care to get up and move. I hadn’t seen him in the bar much since I had been coming there, but he told me later he was doing some work with his brother out of state. I’d never met Johnny’s brother, but from what I’d heard he was just like Johnny, just meaner, bigger and crazier.

I sat there, and I realized I was staring at Johnny, and when he noticed me staring, he turned to face me, face screwed up in a drunken expression of disbelief. Whatever he was going to ask me was lost when clarity broke across his face. “You’re that guy, ain’tcha?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m a guy, yeah.”

This struck him as hilarious, and he burst out laughing and punctuated it with a playful slap. The people sitting on the other side of me quieted, and tiptoed away. “That’s good. You’re a guy. Shit yeah, you’re a guy. You’re *the* fucking guy.” He took a long drink from his pint. “You’re the pizza guy.”

“That’s a me,” I said, ignoring my stinging cheek and not caring if my Italian impression was going to get me another one. Or worse.

He laughed so hard he spit up most of his beer. “Shit yeah, you’re that guy.” He downed the rest of his beer and cleared his throat. “I heard about your little girl.” He shoved his pint glass forward on the bar and waved Lorraine over. “Give us a couple more.”

It took me a second to realize he was buying the round, so I downed mine and pushed the empty glass next to his.

“Thanks.”

He just nodded. “I got a little girl. Lives in Kentucky with her mother. Fuckin’ bitch.”

When the drinks came, I held mine out to him and slammed his drink into mine. “To the bitches,” I said.

“Shit yeah!” he thrust his drink even higher. “TO THE BITCHES!” He drank and slammed his glass down. One of the other guys across the bar caught his eye, and he got halfway off his stool. “Yeah, to the bitches, motherfucker. I mean your mom, too.” The called-out son of a bitch just nodded and turned his attention towards someone else that wasn’t going to kick the crap out of him.

“You see that?” Johnny said, slapping my shoulder.

“Shit yeah,” I cackled, getting into the spirit of things. I’d never been on the other side of the bullying spectrum and I could finally see its appeal.

We are not social buddies. We do not go out and hunt or fish or talk about our feelings, primarily because I don’t want to get shot. We met at the bar, we drink at the bar, we laugh and we’re loud and despite all the miserable bullshit that’s been my life over the past year, it’s amazing to suddenly be completely on the other side of the fence from where I was BC.

The new me hollers and laughs at the top of his lungs and doesn’t care what anyone thinks, slaps waitresses asses and stares down random strangers while the old me stands on the buoy that is the remains of my common sense as the rest of my brain drowns in alcohol and testosterone by osmosis.

And grinning, monstrous Johnny Wicker is my chaperone in this brave new world of hedonistic ass-hattery.

“So what’s the plan, son?”

“Same old shit,” I say as he guides me towards Sandy’s warm, smoky embrace. “Drinkin’ and cussin.’”

“Amen to that, brother,” he says, shouldering open the door. “Honey, I’m home!” he bellows to Lorraine behind the bar. She rolls her eyes at him and gives me that look out of the corner of her eyes. Lorraine is the only person at Sandy’s that knew me BC, and there are some days when I want to write the whole place off because of it. She’s been running bar there probably longer that Johnny or I have been alive, and her age coupled with the innate zen of bar-backing makes her give off this motherly vibe that lets me know that she’s none too happy about the current state of my affairs. However, being a regular and a good tipper has probably done a lot to stay her wicked tongue.

Johnny and I get a table in the back, and he waves one of the waitresses over and puts in an order for a pitcher of Bud. “He’s buyin’.” I nod, because really, what is there to argue.

“Fuckin’ A man, I can’t tell you how much it kills me seein’ you waste your money on that retard.” There’s irony there, but I leave it alone.

“What can I say, I’m a soft touch.”

“I bet you are,” he snickers.

We sit in silence for a couple of minutes and then: “Motherfuckers let me go yesterday.”

He’d been picking up some work on the Collier campus doing car work on some of their college vans, and his firing is about as surprising as my generosity when it comes to liquor.

“What happened?” I don’t care, but it’s obvious that he’s sour about it and this means that there’s going to be no letting it go for him unless he gets whatever it is they did to him off his chest.

“Those fuckers, you know what they said? They said some fuckin bitch said I was sneaking around the back of her fuckin dorm room sniffin her panties. Can you believe that? Do I look the kind of guy who has to go around sniffin panties to get a thrill?”

Not only does he, he looks like the captain of the Olympic Panty-Sniffing team. The beer comes and I just shake my head as I pour our drinks. He snatches his and downs half of it in one greedy swallow.

“Those college girls, man, they wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with me if I was interested them. Shit.”

“That’s rough, man. I told you that place was a little fucked up.”

“Not too fucked up for you, collge man. Mr. I-got-a-degree.” This is one of his favorite talking points, and why I’ll always be a sidekick in Mr. Wicker’s superhero universe.

“A fat lot of good that did me,” and not a single ounce of venom for that sentiment is feigned.

“Not only that, I mean, this is fuckin ridiculous, but my tires are going to shit on my truck. I was counting on that damn money so I could replace ‘em. Now this shit.”

“Aw, do you need some cash to tide you over?” He snarls and pitches the napkin he’s been strangling at me.

“Fuck no do I want your charity. What, you’re gonna give me money like you do with the retard? That how you see me?”

“Oh yeah, you and her, miles of similarities. Look, I could loan it to you.” I lean in close “Someday, I may come to you with a favor,” I mumble, stroking my cheek and channeling my inner Marlon.

He smacks my hand away from my face. “Quit bein’ cute.” He takes a drink. “I can’t fuckin stand how you can just sit on your ass all day and drink and not have to work.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve got maybe another years worth of ‘easy living’ before the pizza money runs out, and then we’re going to have to find someone else to fund our little beer parties.”

He sneers at that. “Shit. I’ll be workin again by then, and you’ll be on your own sorry ass. Why do you think I’m not takin your damn money?”

“Good point. I wouldn’t want me crawling after me for favors either.”

“What?”

“Exactly.” I take another drink. I’d been waiting for this, so I don’t know why I’m so nervous, but I still am. I couldn’t have scripted this into the plan better if I tried. “Which is why, my friend, I think I may have some work for us.”

“What the hell kind of work can both you and I do? I don’t know a damn thing about flippin pizzas and you sure as hell don’t know your way around an engine shop.”

I nod. “This is why this is different. This is special.”

“What’s so damn special about it?”

“Remember what you told me about what you did at that place that one time?”

“That…what? What the hell are you talkin about?”

I lean in a little closer, close as I dare without being slapped for being queer. “That house. In Cantersville.”

Johnny gets red as soon as I mention the house, but I add the Cantersville so he knows that I remember exactly what he had said. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not a blackout drunk. This has been very useful because Johnny is, and in a moment of intense drunken weakness, he let slip one of the ventures he’s most proud of. Two years ago, he and his brother snuck in to an elderly couple’s house after they had heard that they kept their life savings in a safe in their living room. He never said exactly how much they got off of them, but the swell of pride he got telling the story let me know that it wasn’t just a bunch of old War Bonds. On a lark, I checked the papers from around that time to see if they had any reports of the robbery. Only one came close, and the old couple in question were hospitalized, and as far as I knew were still in the assisted living home, not wanting to go back to the house they spent 40 years in for fear the bad men would come back. Thankfully, there were no pictures.

“What the hell do you know about that?”

“Relax, relax, you mentioned it one night and it got me thinking.”

“About what?”

“About easy money.”

“No such damn thing.”

“Look around,” I say lowering my voice some more. “This place is a gold mine.”

“The bar? Sandy’s? You wanna rob Sandy’s?”

“Not the bar,” I say leaning back and taking a drink to smooth over my frantic nerves.

“The town. The whole god-forsaken town.”

Copyright Thacher E. Cleveland