Sylvan Caravan Is Here!

Below is an excerpt from Charlie Sutherland’s acclaimed new collection of short stories, Sylvan Caravan. Click here to get your copy now!

Bossman, Pennsylvania

1974. Your mother’s eyes they was a spectrum, at times moss-blue, times brimstone-gold, times a mingling of both, as when the tide licks on the lakeshore in the minutes before sundown. Because your mother knew you before you knew yourself, blue-and-then-yellow was, for you, what knowing looked like. The color of knowing. The morning you were born, those eyes was all pride and joy and glory, peering at her newborn boy like a prizefighter looks on a downed ring-partner.

1984. Early on, you learned how to fight once you found out you was no good with girls. In the hallways of Imperial Middle, girls avoided you like a deer in the road. A schoolboy at Imperial could aspire to have luck with girls, make varsity, or else get good with his fists. He ought not expect all three, no more than he can expect the makeup of his personality and face to adapt to the cyclical wants of his schoolgirl counterparts. So by the time you was ten or eleven you started punishing your muscles every day until you got so big no one would hurt you no more. That was the plan, anyhow.

1986. With your mother gone these last sour years, your old man is your jailor, breadwinner, and world entire. Darrell Sr. used to work two jobs, though he quit working the graveyard shift at the graveyard when your mother passed, there being one fewer mouth to feed. Now he’d split his time between the warehouses of Smiley’s Metallurgical and the barroom of Callaghan’s Pub.

1987. Day two of freshman year, we’re having lunch beers on the jungle gym with the boys and one of them, Paul Minnow, makes light of the way I, your best friend John Beech, am holding my beer can. Minnow calls me a word which I already know is true about myself but which, if this truth came to light, you know as well as I do would ruin me before high school even gets going.

“That word means stick in European English,” you say. “Are you calling John a European stick?”

Minnow grins like the shit-eater everyone knows him to be, and before the boy can fix up a fancy retort you wallop half the teeth in his head down his gullet and the other half down his windpipe. They call you into the principal’s office that afternoon. You’re sweating like a pig in church but playing it cool, you sitting across from bald old Mr. K., Mr. K. beating you to death with the brows, you buzzed off the lunch beers not having bothered to wash Minnow’s blood off your knuckles, Mr. K. very much noticing the blood, you trying to answer Mr. K.’s question as to where Mr. Minnow’s front teeth might have run off to, you shrugging like it is one of life’s great mysteries.

“Must have something to do with Paul’s chaw habit,” you say. “Could be them teeth was loose to begin with.” You add, humorlessly, “And he sneezed too hard.”

That night your old man says, “If you wasn’t my son I’d sure-is-hell take you out the back like you was nothing, which you is, I’d sell your carcass down the glue factory, and by God if the glue factory wouldn’t pay, I’d plunk you in the river for the beavers to hump. You sure-is-hell couldn’t make it the two – damn – days – you – somebitch.” Like a windshield wiper Darrell Sr. whips you back and forth with a work boot till your purple back bleeds. You ask, “What are you calling yourself a bitch for?” Winded, he says, “You is coming with me to the plant tomorrow. That’ll teach you. Five o’clock your ass is in the car and a hot cup of coffee in my hand, else it’s the boot again. Sure-is-God’s-justice it’s the boot again.”

You scarcely last the first week at the plant. To avoid the boot, you move out of your old man’s house and go to work at Feathers. There, you’ll meet Cookie, the Bossman’s favorite dancer and your future wife.

Feathers put Imperial on the map. Sometimes you wonder aloud why they don’t just rename the town Strip Club, Pennsylvania. ‘Least thataway it’d sound less like a damn death-star, you say. Me and the girls roll our eyes at this.

1991. Me and the girls call you Darry, but your government name is Darrell Saylor Browning IV. For a security guard, every day is a little different from the last. New faces, new bastards, new bodies to bounce. You’re good at your job because you’re hateful when you have a mind to be. By and by you’ve learned to channel that rage to your advantage. You have a system. The system is your edge. Be courageous, don’t beat yourself up. Mind your meds and they’ll mind you. All you can do is keep on pressing on. Keep on depressing on, Cookie’d say.

1989. By time you’d sussed out I was John Beech, your old friend, we’d already been working together at Feathers for several months. You’d had this look on your face like you’d caught me licking the underside of a car. I looked good in those days. I known you the whole time, of course, but I didn’t know how you’d take it if you knew who I really was.

“What, you ain’t never seen a pretty ladyboy before?” I’d said.

“Naw,” you’d said.

“Naw, you ain’t seen no ladyboy before? Or naw as in, you ain’t never seen one this pretty before?” I’d said.

“Both, I guess,” you’d said.

1997. The Bossman’s a son of a bitch. Always was. He pays you minimum wage under the table, which I guess is standard practice. Ten years working, you’re still making minimum wage and no tips. Everybody tells you: Imperial wages is Imperial wages.

Boss is a broken record, too. “Don’t fucking touch the register under any circumstances ever,” he’ll say.

“Sorry, Boss,” you’ll say.

“Don’t stare at customers,” Boss will say. “Watch, don’t gape.”

“Copy, Boss. Wouldn’t want anyone calling me a stare-do-well.”

“Go clean the toilet before anyone sees it,” Boss will say. “Fucking monstrosity.”

“Shit, okay, Bossman. Pun intended.”

“Enough with the puns, Darrell,” Boss will say.

“Okay.”

“You’re too dumb for your own good, bud,” Boss will say.

“10-4.”

“What did I tell you about the fucking register?” Boss will say.

“Not to touch the fucker.”

“Ever,” Boss will say.

“10-4, Bossman.”

1998. One bloody Sunday night, Bossman kicks and hits a guy to death for beating up on one of the girls whose name is Modesty or Chastity or something unbelievable like that. By time you pull Boss off the guy, the guy’s head is jam. Just strawberry jam. Turns out Bossman is babydaddy to one of Modesty’s kids. Afterwards, you and him sit in the empty club waiting for the cops to show. Boss is drinking heavy.

“Kicking dudes’ heads in is my job, not yours,” you say.

Not listening, Boss says, “This world is something else.”

“Imperial, you mean?” you say.

“Galaxy,” Boss says. “Whole fucking galaxy.”

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