[Fiction] Palm by Josh Megson

Palm

by Josh Megson

Beneath Marlboro smoke touching the ceiling, I put an afternoon gin on my tab. Outside, the sun gleams off white sand and blinds a boardwalk of red-tan tourists hauling coolers and wincing at the sandspurs grabbing hold. The locals shake cigarette packs, shoot pool on ripped-carpet tables, sip liquor straight, dance a lethargic two-step to a skipping country record, and thank the heavens they spent the last decade here at Rosco’s Bar because their hard-earned dollars had finally gone to an AC unit. With the artificial breeze, nothing got us back outside except the prospect of more booze money. And children. We all have children we wished we didn’t.

“Fill me up once more, and I’m out of your hair,” I tell the bartender, then drink my last few drops, pick up my guitar and sign, and head on.

It takes more than a couple of blinks to adjust to the light, and even more to shake some ginny cobwebs. I feel the place where my hair thins burning and shun the beckons of scantily clad teenagers herding customers into a row of create-your-own-T-shirt stores. Moms with towels wrapping their legs shuffle after toddlers smelling ice cream. If everyone would shut up in unison, we could hear the waves crash. I plop onto the bench outside the arcade and fish a pick out of my pockets, then chew it as I place my sign at my feet and lean beneath a foot of awning shade.

My daddy taught me to keep my eyes at my feet while performing. Makes you look downtrodden. Also taught me not to play anything perfectly. Seems to send a hidden psychological message of failure that allows them to empathize with your impoverishment. The thinking we do for a few measly bucks. Everyone feels oppressed in this heat, especially when they can’t see or hear the water. They empathize enough for my babies, Jo Ann and Chip, and their mother, Sandra, to eat without begging for seconds. Both my young ones are getting close to school age. It just means they eat more.

I know no songs, only collections of chords that go on endlessly and until I’ve earned my keep. I strum from the middle and figure I’ll work my way to some edge when the sun falls. My toenails are cracked and skin leathery; the arcade beeps sound as my metronome. I nod when someone drops change into my cup but seldom meet their eyes. Soon, the rhythm turns trance and takes me away, and I’m a humming, tapping, closed-eyed heap of bones. And I don’t wish to hear the waves break. Hours can pass like this. Bearable ones.

“You consider this bluegrass?” a man asks in a high-pitched drawl. He drops a wad of bills in my cup.

“Thank you,” I say. “Haven’t yet named it.”

“Well, it sure is something.” He’s dressed in a black button-down and bolo tie with a straw hat, khaki shorts, and flip-flops. “You play live?”

“Am right now.”

“Apologies, sometimes I fail to speak as clearly as my intentions.” He drops a hand, and I shake it and look up at his blond beard, purple sun-damaged nose, and red, watery eyes. “Name’s Forest Fields. Grandpappy was an outdoorsman. A veteran, too, like yourself.”

My sign reads, Homeless veteran. Anything helps. God bless. I spent three months at Camp Lejeune during peace times before a dishonorable discharge for a murky piss test.”

“Curtis,” I say. “What war?”

“Shit, one of ’em. You ever played in Palm?”

“I usually use my fingers.”

“There I go again. Palm’s a little town an hour inland of here. See, I run a bar there, and I’m in dire need of a performer. We’ve been slow, and the food has only got worse.”

“Pays?”

“Name your price.”

“Hundred for the weekend.”

“Here’s you fifty up front.”

#

We leave for Palm in a backfiring, rusted, black Pontiac Firebird. Forest drives fast and speaks faster about nothing, or something lost in the cacophony of voice and engine. Whatever the topic, I react with enough grunts and agreeables to keep him spilling until we reach the exit, and his knuckles ease on the wheel.

We half circle off the exit, and Welcome to Palm: Where You Hold the Whole World greets us. I scoff at it. Any town an hour from the coast slouches closer to purgatory. The sand sits far beneath the grass, and the absence of ocean increases the heat’s dominion over folks threefold. Makes them loopy and irritable. No one stays here, either. After the sign, we meet stained campers and once-standing wooden shacks. Tireless cars propped on boat racks sit outside them, and swingless play sets faultily wave in a breeze that only swirls hot air into more of it. Everything misses something. Forest points to incomplete landmarks and mutters about their history, and I am preoccupied with a one-armed woman walking hand in hand with Sasquatch.

“Who are they?” I ask.

“Suzy and Seth Melbourne.”

“Is he wearing a costume?”

“Of course.” Forest smiles, and I notice his teeth are a checkerboard of white and gold. “Like I said on the way over, Palm’s a town of performers. See, Suzy chopped her arm off to join the traveling circus. Seth, well, steroids sent his hormones all out of whack, and now he grows facial hair across his whole face. But the arms and legs, that’s a costume.”

“You needed me in a town full of performers?”

“Well, we’re all in competition. Naturally.”

He turns left onto a dirt road, and I peer into my reflection in the window, wondering what sort of oddity Forest saw when he picked me up off the boardwalk. My beard’s scruffy, my eyes a bit too far apart, and Sandra never appreciated the mole on my left cheek, but comparatively, I see an average Joe. A face seen on other folks’ bodies in slight variations. A face blurring into a deserted school we pass on the left, the windows boarded and kudzu cascading down in emerald waves. The vine’s greenness contrasts what else I’ve seen, the rest shaded with a yellow film like that of a flashback sequence in a movie. A block from the school, a green-haired clown snaps me from my reflective daze with an air horn, compulsively sounding it off every few seconds while sitting on a bus stop bench.

“Y’all’ve got a transit system running here?” I ask.

“Sure don’t,” Forest says, “but the blue clown waits for the bus regardless.”

“He had green hair.”

“We call him what he feels.”

“Because the bus won’t come?”

“Something like that.” He taps the steering wheel and edges closer to it. “Only a mile or

so left now.”

We seem far from it, the school and clown the last sign of human life. Fields of dead

grass run on forever, aside from patches of tree stumps, rusted irrigation equipment, the odd crow, and a muddy swamp. The edge of the world, I think. Far enough to disappear without a trace. I would not be the first street worker to go missing under these circumstances, certainly not the last, but I never guessed it to be me. Never even crossed my mind until we crossed into Palm, and now I am aware of the sweat soaking my forehead and the bottoms of my feet, of the softly speeding heartbeat that I cannot put back in my chest, and of the pulsating burn weighing on my stomach. Until Forest turns into an unmarked gravel driveway and parks a good way down it. Then I’m just stuck. I keep my eyes peeled for a bar, or even a semblance of one, or any sort of building that could function as the sort, and come up empty while Forest undoes his seat belt and clears his throat. Sure this is the moment he pulls out a gun and shoots me or makes an indecent request, I gulp and hold my breath in my esophagus, my knee tapping against the underbelly of the glove box, my hands hidden in the seat crevices, shaking. A second passes, and Forest gets out of the car. I’m still stuck staring ahead through the front windshield. Another, and I’m thoughtless, empty, and praying death comes as blankly, without any horrors beyond this void.

“You coming?” Forest calls out from behind the trunk.

“Where’s the bar?” I ask.

He walks back around and opens the driver’s side door, then flashes his checkerboard smile and hands me two twenties and a ten-dollar bill. His hand remains still. Mine leaves the crevice, wet and shaky.

“Bonfire Bar. Got a shed a hundred yards down with the alcohol. Otherwise, we’ll be dancin’ under the stars.”

The breath leaves my throat and my knees lock. I unbuckle and touch the outside air, thick and sticky, of Palm.

“Cool concept.” My voice initially comes out shrill. I cough. “Attract a crowd?”

“Last stop for the caravan. What I said earlier about competition was something of a white lie. Again, I struggle with effective communication. Apologies.” Forest begins to walk down the road, and sycamore trees surround us, the bark like picked scabs. “We compete purely in jest. A town for performers by performers best explains Palm. See, every weekend we have a route beginning with a clown show at the town sign and concluding here with a great bonfire.”

“And in the middle?”

“Sasquatches, illustrated men, bearded ladies, fire breathers, lions, tigers, and bears. And also musicians like yourself and card magicians. Everyone involved performs.”

Ahead, the sycamore trees’ leaves are red despite the season.

“What’s with the—”

“And the money circulates between us all. We pay each other, then charge, and amazingly, we all stay afloat. I would boast we have the most efficient economy in the world, but I’ve never left this state. Do you know what you’re playing this evening?”

I ignore the trees and am relieved at the sight of the alcohol shed, a dilapidated heap of unpainted wooden planks crudely nailed together in X’s rather than vertically. I am sure Forest has a clear reason for this, along with the sycamores trapped in autumn, as he had for all my other queries.

“Something along the lines of what you heard earlier.”

“Think of it as the swan song to tonight’s festivities. Nothing too up-tempo and melancholic enough to allow for introspection.”

“Okay.”

“We begin in fifteen minutes. Wait here, and I’ll return with the troupe in say…” Forest checks an imagined watch. “A few hours.”

“I’m not coming with you?”

“First timers must only do, not see. The golden rule.”

I know another but nod, and he is gone.

The first fifteen minutes alone are the calmest of the trip. Until I notice absolute silence surrounding me. I mean, no bug noises or bird chirps. No wind rustling leaves or distant car motors. The isolation brings up panic again, but I have nowhere to go. The school, the closest landmark, has to be miles from me, unwalkable, and I haven’t a clue how to return. I venture into the liquor shed and decide on taking a bottle for myself. A little pick-me-up for my troubles. You leave a man alone in the woods, the least you can do for him is wet his tongue, so I say. Inside the shed rests a red floral couch and a chestnut armoire carved with its own flowers. I open it to jars of liquid, all unmarked, some brown but mostly clear, and I sniff the tops, making sure Forest did not con me with a stash of water. Upon sniffing, my eyes water, and I take a jar of the clear stuff onto the couch and lie down. Outside, the sun starts setting and the woods grow darker. I figure Sandra and the babies are missing me, have been expecting me home for some hours, and I miss them back. Sometimes I don’t. A lot of times. My daddy nicknamed me Wildman, said I was destined to roam free like the pioneers, like men without pensions, 401(k)s, baby mouths to feed, water bills, and a place to call home. I wish he had been right. I drink to it, and whatever’s in the jars is strong and bitter. My eyes water to the point I’m crying, not in a sad way, just crying, the water still falling even as I pause between sips, my mouth pursed and throat burning. I keep on crying. Just keep on and keep sipping. The time passes that way. Passes on until all the light beneath the shed door washes out into darkness, and faint wails and cries interrupt the silence that became more natural the longer I sit in it. When the hollering’s close enough to make out the odd word, I notice how comfortably the hours have passed. How a couple sips can take time and warp it like crushing a yard of tin foil into a little ball, smooshing away what you don’t want. Every day, I smoosh away some more time at Rosco’s or playing guitar, the heat making me comatose. I never told Forest, but I hardly ever remember playing or what I play or for how long.

#

When the cracks of gravel sound beneath the Palm performers’ feet, I leave the shed stumbling, red nosed, and ill prepared. I fetch my guitar from beside the couch and stare upon the motley crew, and they all look the same beneath whatever gimmick makes them different. The one-armed lady could be the blue clown’s sister, who could be the young magician’s father. Forest leads the charge and greets me; the rest stay a few steps behind, standing and waiting, a silence taking hold of them. It feels eerie again. The alcohol washes away the panic. They all hold balloons shaped like stars in one hand and empty cups in the other.

“Had a little taste, haven’t you?” Forest asks.

“The hours got boring. Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to.”

“What’s done is done. Does it enhance your play?”

“Figure so,” I say. Forest slips by me and pulls jars out of the armoire. The others circle

the shed and fill their cups. “Never play sober.”

“Well, I’ll consider it necessary, then,” Forest says, patting my shoulder. He turns his attention to the crowd. “Palmers, our final performance comes from an outsider, a beach bum who played the perfect music for our ritual’s finale. Close your eyes. Sip. Let him take you away.”

I wave to the crowd and they raise their cups. I take a seat on a rock and rest my guitar on my lap, fumbling with the strings and pretending to tune it. Truth be told, it always sounds good enough to somebody. Enough to drop some change for me, at least. Although the night has settled the sun, the heat stays just as crisp and humid, everything stuffy with it, our breaths choked into our throats. The silence comes again, and I strum a chord to calm it. Woozy, I keep strumming the chord while racking my brain for a progression that will not come to me as the eyes of the people feel closer than they really are, the darkness disrupting the space between us, and I feel claustrophobic.

“Be free, man.” Forest grins at me, and his teeth all look the same. “Let ’em free.”

My fingers slide up and down the strings; I nod my head and pick to the rhythm I feel possessing me, my foot tapping as my guitar silences the silence with croons of pity, sends waves into the oddities, sends their heads wobbly and feet shuffling about. They commence to wail, making up lyrics and crying them into the sky as Forest fills up their cups over and over again. I lose track of the time but keep count of Forest’s refills. After three, everyone’s so loose they hardly move to my music, now swirling as a unit. The clown’s wig has fallen, as has the Sasquatch’s suit, and with another pour from Forest, they’re naked. Luminescent and waving, they look like the moon on Earth, my chords the song of the stars. I’ve played them out of their clothes, then out of their skin, the crowd see-through and wisping away. Forest chugs the final jar and joins them, the group now a collection of fireflies blinking with my strums. I peer closer at the shards of light, and they look like angels, a swarm of identical angels, their faces converging into a single face. They all look like Forest.

I keep playing, and hard, knuckles whitening around the neck, my fingers bleeding as they clutch for the strings. I feel myself moving in circles, around the edges and back to center, a pattern I cannot escape and do not want to. I want to stay here in Palm with the angels. Where I hold the whole world. When the sun rises, the light of their bodies dim, and I slow, slow, slow until the silence returns. They put back on their clothes. The clown, the Sasquatch, the one-armed woman, the magician, Forest; they all return as if they never left, and let their balloons into the sky, then walk back down the gravel driveway. I follow them.

We reach the end of the woods, and the sunlight blinds me. When I blink to adjust, nothing changes, it all stays black. I feel Forest guide me into the Firebird, hear the sound of the seatbelt click and the roar of the engine.

“I can’t see,” I tell him as I feel us begin to move.

“Here,” he says. Then I feel the cold metal of coins pushed against my eye sockets.

Suddenly, the yellow film cloaking Palm lifts, and it is as green as the kudzu. The silence disperses. I hear birds chirp and watch them fly above us. I stare ahead at the caravan of cars leading us back into Palm. It looks different. More alive. I can see it now. I just had to open my eyes.

Bio: Josh Megson is a fiction writer from Albemarle, North Carolina. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. His writings are rooted in the rural south, as he is, living with his partner and cat.