I had the urge to write more. I needed to write about Steve's father so
here a chapter devoted to him. Erm.enjoy :)
*********
Lyman Randle's jaundiced sweaty ass melded to the flowered sofa, swirling his whisky in his swollen fingers in his right hand, his left content gripping a long cigarette, his cracked face contorted in torment, a pitiful prisoner-of-war martyrdom (Prometheus arising everyday, so the vulture could come ripping into his liver) expression, with layers of newspapers on his lap like a flimsy skirt.
Decoy pheasants are made twice the size of real pheasants, so that the pheasants flying over would misjudge the distance to the ground and crash when they dived down when they imagined they would be joining their fellows. Each damn day, he would reluctantly awake next to his cold and formidable wife, feeling the sinking collapsing feeling in his lungs as if he was taking a suicidal plunge. It wasn't until he sat at his desk each morning, feebly trying to bury himself to him work, did he truly feel the self-pity and remorse of how he chronically misjudged everything in his life. After it was done, he came home to that iceberg of a woman Ann Randle; a stubborn little shit of a son Steve Randle, and comfort in the fiery bosom of Jack Daniels.
Lyman hadn't meant to have a child. It was an accident. He could remember the fat nurse handing a red bald weeping infant to him at the hospital, he didn't want to take it, but he took it anyway. He was relieved that his wife was asleep.
"Oh!" was all he managed to squeak and he laughed nervously to cover the tears that frolicked on the edge of his eye sockets. "I've done it," he thought. "I've made a horrible mistake" Staring into that ugly little face he felt that he could not endue any more misery, any more humiliation . The nurse beamed at him like a waitress who wanted a tip, mistaking his tears and laughter of the joy of a proud father.
"I'll leave you alone for a while" The nurse bubbled, her face glowing in excitement. She just loved it all, the "miracle of life" she liked to say. She liked murmuring comforting nothings to women in labor, the more pain, the longer, the prettier, the younger the woman the better. She could talk to her friends all day about young pretty women having long excruciatingly painful births, how she gave them moral support and let them grab her arms, and she would finish the story with a happy flourish about the baby being the cutest thing and how the young pretty mother cried with happiness when she put it in their arms. If the woman wasn't young or pretty, or when the baby was ugly- she was satisfied with a weepy delighted father.
Taking her leave, the nurse walked off with little bouncing strides and shut the door behind her with annoyingly gentleness. The room turned silent, besides Ann's slow breathing and the baby's cries. He was alone with his child, and it terrified him. At least for the nurse he felt like at least he had some direction. How dare that fat smug bitch of a nurse abandon him! What the hell was he supposed to be doing with it?
Lyman patted its back. He tried to rock it. He tried shushing it. He hummed a jazzy tune that he improvised himself. It screamed. Lyman even kissed it's head, but it's the softness was like kissing powdered flour and he wiped his mouth to remove the queasy tingling sensation in his lips. He moved his arms because they itched. In doing so, the baby's head was left unsupported, so the baby burst into hysterical sobs and spread it's torso back away him in some desperate, almost obscene position that seemed to plead with him to leave him be, to go out and find a real man to be his father. He had spent 2 minutes with the child, but already the child was disgusted with him.
"Now, I should die. " He whispered into the baby's wide gapping hole of a mouth. This son will be a legacy of himself. Lyman would like his son to be handsome, everyone would love this kid, and so he could get credit- but wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of raising the boy who hated him since he was dead.
He kneeled over and died.
But actually Ann and Lyman Randle went back home and named the baby Steve.
17 years later, Lyman Randle is still eager to die. He knows when he dies, he will love himself- his face, his body, his manhood-because it would all no longer exist. It fascinated Lyman- even if loved his wife, was terribly handsome, adored his child, went to church, had another child (a girl with golden ringlets despite nether him or his wife were blonde), became stinking rich, moved to California and got a big yard with picket fences-his heart would one day cease to beat. The business of being good seemed oh so very futile in the end. So he lived mediocrity then he loathed himself for it, and wanted to die. Besides, he knew being good wouldn't make him any less miserable. What he wanted was to drink, be alone and go to Jazz clubs to drink and be alone. He just drank alone on the flowered sofa.
He drank until he was felt that his insides had become the outside, until his spirit was drifting away somewhere like an explorer or an artist seeking for some fountain of youth, or time machine or what not. Sometimes he became a vase of roses. But then he always came back with painful clarity back to his family, his reality, himself (with a hangover no less)
If only Steve could leave him alone! Didn't Steve realize that he was doing enough just by coming home with money , to provide for his mother the grease on his filthy head?! Steve was nearly a man now, shouldn't men understand each other? Why couldn't Steve stop making him,and treating him like a failure?
At one time, he could remember drinking on the sofa with a drink to help him sleep late at night to the murmur of old timey jazz to the radio, feeling a piercing icy stare in the back of his head. He twisted his neck and see a 6-year old scrawny Steve standing bathed in darkness with a toy car in his hand, grinning to himself as if he were satisfied with an undeniable truth that nobody else could possibly accept or understand besides himself, his fierce eyes squinty full of malevolence. He was so frightened and repulsed he jolted and spilt his drink all over himself. Steve made 3 sharp coughing noises that were laughs, laughing at him for scaring him. Lyman smacked him, Steve cried and refused to stop even after yelling and more smacking, he carried a struggling snot-nosed screaming biting Steve to bed.
The older he got, the more smackings Steve provoked with his loud gaping black hole of a mouth and less tears they were. Eventually he stopped crying altogether when he was 10. He must learn Lyman thought. I'm his goddamn father, and he's my goddamn mistake. I should be able to fix him a little! He smacked him harder. Steve did not cry. All he would was look at his feet, his eyes seething, as if he were about to make his feet combust.
One time Lyman gotten so frustrated with his insolent little face and whole mangy appearance when Steve was about 13, he grabbed Steve by his greasy locks and took him to the kitchen sink, crushed his neck against the basin and turned the faucet on his head. He took the dishwashing soap and rubbed as hard as he could into the boy's scalp, meanwhile Steve struggling and cussing mingled with bubbled hoarse screaming for his mother.
Ann ran in and grabbed her son from beneath the tap. Holding Steve shoulders tightly, she told him in a breathless voice to go take a shower. Steve ran without looking back. Ann looked at her husband, arms folded, eyes wide as if he had committed a grave sin. What was so bad he wondered? There was no commandment saying: Thou shalt not put son head under faucet and turn it on.
Lyman still felt very foolish, his sleeves rolled up, his hairy pink gorilla arms dripping and covered with soapsuds, the shirt wet in the front, his face flushed and sweating.
"I was just trying to wash the boy's hair." He wheezed.
Ann's expression did not change. From then on, he did not smack Steve. He gave Steve money. 6 or 7 dollars quite a bargain for temporary peace. Still Steve did not admire him, Steve was not kind, nor understanding.
He sometimes wished that Steve would marry a girl he didn't love pregnant by accident -they would have a baby boy and this boy would be mean and bad- tempered and spent every minute that he returned from home from his horrible job yelling at him for money, ratting his smart little mouth off, wearing way too tight jeans, and fixing his hair ugly just to drive him crazy.
But he always took it back right afterwards. It was too horrible.
Lyman Randle's jaundiced sweaty ass melded to the flowered sofa, swirling his whisky in his swollen fingers in his right hand, his left content gripping a long cigarette, his cracked face contorted in torment, a pitiful prisoner-of-war martyrdom (Prometheus arising everyday, so the vulture could come ripping into his liver) expression, with layers of newspapers on his lap like a flimsy skirt.
Decoy pheasants are made twice the size of real pheasants, so that the pheasants flying over would misjudge the distance to the ground and crash when they dived down when they imagined they would be joining their fellows. Each damn day, he would reluctantly awake next to his cold and formidable wife, feeling the sinking collapsing feeling in his lungs as if he was taking a suicidal plunge. It wasn't until he sat at his desk each morning, feebly trying to bury himself to him work, did he truly feel the self-pity and remorse of how he chronically misjudged everything in his life. After it was done, he came home to that iceberg of a woman Ann Randle; a stubborn little shit of a son Steve Randle, and comfort in the fiery bosom of Jack Daniels.
Lyman hadn't meant to have a child. It was an accident. He could remember the fat nurse handing a red bald weeping infant to him at the hospital, he didn't want to take it, but he took it anyway. He was relieved that his wife was asleep.
"Oh!" was all he managed to squeak and he laughed nervously to cover the tears that frolicked on the edge of his eye sockets. "I've done it," he thought. "I've made a horrible mistake" Staring into that ugly little face he felt that he could not endue any more misery, any more humiliation . The nurse beamed at him like a waitress who wanted a tip, mistaking his tears and laughter of the joy of a proud father.
"I'll leave you alone for a while" The nurse bubbled, her face glowing in excitement. She just loved it all, the "miracle of life" she liked to say. She liked murmuring comforting nothings to women in labor, the more pain, the longer, the prettier, the younger the woman the better. She could talk to her friends all day about young pretty women having long excruciatingly painful births, how she gave them moral support and let them grab her arms, and she would finish the story with a happy flourish about the baby being the cutest thing and how the young pretty mother cried with happiness when she put it in their arms. If the woman wasn't young or pretty, or when the baby was ugly- she was satisfied with a weepy delighted father.
Taking her leave, the nurse walked off with little bouncing strides and shut the door behind her with annoyingly gentleness. The room turned silent, besides Ann's slow breathing and the baby's cries. He was alone with his child, and it terrified him. At least for the nurse he felt like at least he had some direction. How dare that fat smug bitch of a nurse abandon him! What the hell was he supposed to be doing with it?
Lyman patted its back. He tried to rock it. He tried shushing it. He hummed a jazzy tune that he improvised himself. It screamed. Lyman even kissed it's head, but it's the softness was like kissing powdered flour and he wiped his mouth to remove the queasy tingling sensation in his lips. He moved his arms because they itched. In doing so, the baby's head was left unsupported, so the baby burst into hysterical sobs and spread it's torso back away him in some desperate, almost obscene position that seemed to plead with him to leave him be, to go out and find a real man to be his father. He had spent 2 minutes with the child, but already the child was disgusted with him.
"Now, I should die. " He whispered into the baby's wide gapping hole of a mouth. This son will be a legacy of himself. Lyman would like his son to be handsome, everyone would love this kid, and so he could get credit- but wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of raising the boy who hated him since he was dead.
He kneeled over and died.
But actually Ann and Lyman Randle went back home and named the baby Steve.
17 years later, Lyman Randle is still eager to die. He knows when he dies, he will love himself- his face, his body, his manhood-because it would all no longer exist. It fascinated Lyman- even if loved his wife, was terribly handsome, adored his child, went to church, had another child (a girl with golden ringlets despite nether him or his wife were blonde), became stinking rich, moved to California and got a big yard with picket fences-his heart would one day cease to beat. The business of being good seemed oh so very futile in the end. So he lived mediocrity then he loathed himself for it, and wanted to die. Besides, he knew being good wouldn't make him any less miserable. What he wanted was to drink, be alone and go to Jazz clubs to drink and be alone. He just drank alone on the flowered sofa.
He drank until he was felt that his insides had become the outside, until his spirit was drifting away somewhere like an explorer or an artist seeking for some fountain of youth, or time machine or what not. Sometimes he became a vase of roses. But then he always came back with painful clarity back to his family, his reality, himself (with a hangover no less)
If only Steve could leave him alone! Didn't Steve realize that he was doing enough just by coming home with money , to provide for his mother the grease on his filthy head?! Steve was nearly a man now, shouldn't men understand each other? Why couldn't Steve stop making him,and treating him like a failure?
At one time, he could remember drinking on the sofa with a drink to help him sleep late at night to the murmur of old timey jazz to the radio, feeling a piercing icy stare in the back of his head. He twisted his neck and see a 6-year old scrawny Steve standing bathed in darkness with a toy car in his hand, grinning to himself as if he were satisfied with an undeniable truth that nobody else could possibly accept or understand besides himself, his fierce eyes squinty full of malevolence. He was so frightened and repulsed he jolted and spilt his drink all over himself. Steve made 3 sharp coughing noises that were laughs, laughing at him for scaring him. Lyman smacked him, Steve cried and refused to stop even after yelling and more smacking, he carried a struggling snot-nosed screaming biting Steve to bed.
The older he got, the more smackings Steve provoked with his loud gaping black hole of a mouth and less tears they were. Eventually he stopped crying altogether when he was 10. He must learn Lyman thought. I'm his goddamn father, and he's my goddamn mistake. I should be able to fix him a little! He smacked him harder. Steve did not cry. All he would was look at his feet, his eyes seething, as if he were about to make his feet combust.
One time Lyman gotten so frustrated with his insolent little face and whole mangy appearance when Steve was about 13, he grabbed Steve by his greasy locks and took him to the kitchen sink, crushed his neck against the basin and turned the faucet on his head. He took the dishwashing soap and rubbed as hard as he could into the boy's scalp, meanwhile Steve struggling and cussing mingled with bubbled hoarse screaming for his mother.
Ann ran in and grabbed her son from beneath the tap. Holding Steve shoulders tightly, she told him in a breathless voice to go take a shower. Steve ran without looking back. Ann looked at her husband, arms folded, eyes wide as if he had committed a grave sin. What was so bad he wondered? There was no commandment saying: Thou shalt not put son head under faucet and turn it on.
Lyman still felt very foolish, his sleeves rolled up, his hairy pink gorilla arms dripping and covered with soapsuds, the shirt wet in the front, his face flushed and sweating.
"I was just trying to wash the boy's hair." He wheezed.
Ann's expression did not change. From then on, he did not smack Steve. He gave Steve money. 6 or 7 dollars quite a bargain for temporary peace. Still Steve did not admire him, Steve was not kind, nor understanding.
He sometimes wished that Steve would marry a girl he didn't love pregnant by accident -they would have a baby boy and this boy would be mean and bad- tempered and spent every minute that he returned from home from his horrible job yelling at him for money, ratting his smart little mouth off, wearing way too tight jeans, and fixing his hair ugly just to drive him crazy.
But he always took it back right afterwards. It was too horrible.