Don't Let Nothin'/Nobody Stand In Yer Way

Don’t Let Nothin’/Nobody Stand In Yer Way

by Sam Ford

And I started with me. On a good Friday. An average Friday. Surely. A good one. And I thought to myself. And I thought and I thought. Musta’ thought. My God, you know how to drink, son.

See: My old man’d called me earlier. An American man he was…a sentimentalist.

And he was talkin’ about about about. The time his son went fishing in upstate New York (“y’see it ain’t all…aint’ all…” vile motherfuckin’ brick and and the breakin’ of, papa). Y’see it had its…had its. Moments – wha? Ripping nightcrawlers from the earthiest earth. Watching them writhe. Before the word writhe. I mean…watching them fuckers writhe. Come a scratched record-setting sunfish. I lived for that truly worm. Writhing like an insomniac.

Mama was gone gone goes so it was: Papa’s…don’t let yer babies grow up to be…

And there was papa, cellular as a homecoming queen, wiping 29 years from his eyes, trying not to not cry. I wondered how I’d ever thank him for all he’d done. If I’d ever find a bucket big enough. For such a huge heart.

His phone-call sure did make me lonesome and sad.

And I was still living in, living in. New York City. With the shelves. And the sirens. And the big sunglasses. And the big beards. And the bricksbricksbricks. And the demands. And all the dogs shitting on sidewalks trying not to look embarrassed. And the skinny jeans. And the suffering dreams.

And the money – have money/make money/have money.

“Y’see, S***y Boy…” the bartender said, as he refilled the Brooklyn. “Here. Ya’ gotta’ have money to make it.”

The place was packed and I was thinking about that phone-call. Getting the knot out. Or tying it tighter. It was one in the same, maybe.

I ordered a shot of Turkey and thanked my friend the bartender. In addition to being a bartender, he was also an excellent songwriter. And sensitive. The worst kind of excellent.

The place was packed. A forever Friday. Millions of rats and roaches trying to get along in a closet. Praying tomorrow wouldn’t come but if it did, they wouldn’t have to wait too long to be seated for brunch.

The speaker system was threatening to melt down. Top-of-the-pops hits were playing and some were singing along and some were crying along and some were dying along and I might as well’ve been the oldest one there. It was the first big warm day and all the lil’ girlies were blessing the lil’ lads with pale flashes of skin through tanktops and miniskirts.

It was a sad story. The place’d once been a quiet, lowlit Irish speakeasy. Things got written and discussed there. Friends were made and kept. Men cocked their heads to the side and listened to the women and remembered the things they said and remembered their names. And the women had real troubles sometimes and sometimes they spoke a little bit about them. Sometimes the women smiled and showed that their teeth were a little fucked-up in places. Yeah, virtually everyone in the place was human back then.

Then then then…

The local university shattered the place like a walnut. The veal started drifting through the doors. Loud and fast and savvy. A generation raised by a thousand channels and the highest speed internet ever in the history of all of time. They sat in groups, each one on their phone, sending text messages to people who weren’t there. The boys ordered Pabst Blue Ribbon ‘cause it was cheap and they could drink twelve and feel accomplished. The girls ordered vodka and rum drinks with diet mixers. They were wondering why they were there. They were thinking about where else they could be. The same magazine was telling them how to be independent and how to please a man. Well jeez, that shit must be tough.

It was throbbing like a wound, the place. The bartender reached out his hand and it looked real good so I took it and shook it. We were both drowning.

“Somewhere there’s a life for both of us,” I told him.

Outside was worse in a way. You could hear the whole town trying to talk above itself. The streets shook as packs of men, the ones who weren’t gonna’ end up getting laid that night, barked and cackled and threatened each other.

“Fuck you, dude! Naw, fuck you, dude! Did you see that bitch? I’m fucking starving, dude. Let’s…is there a fucking pizza place around here?”

I tried to move past these guys. They were drunken towers threatening to fall. One brushed past me and I took his weight against my shoulder. It nearly spun me around. And, see, I was drunkles too and I called out into the night:

“Watch it, shitbird!”

But he and his friends were gone and others were moving toward me and I had to dodge them as well. Dozens of taxi cabs made the avenue a yellow ocean. They were on their horns. Pulling over and pulling out. Blue balls for a fare. The beads on their seat covers all stained with sweat.

“Hey, fuck you!” one of them said in an English that wasn’t.

It was shaping up to be a crowbar of a night. I was gonna’ try, really try, to make it home unscathed.

There were no trees. But there were streetlights. There was no grass. But there were gutters. There were no stars. But there were bricks.

And I was still thinking of papa bear’s call. I was drunk off it and everything else. I puked in an empty trashcan and heard laughter from all around. I hung my head over the orange wrought-iron. More vomit came and it hurt to get it out. I could feel sweat running from the back of my head and down my spine. It was hot as hell outside and I was not a rich man.

Not even Friday could help me. I worked on Saturdays and I’d be working through a hangover like a hatchet-man clears a vault. To work through the working. Grinding like a southpaw in need of Tommy John. And I was so grateful to have a job it made me puke some more.

A large hand gripped my shoulder and I spun around. It was a man’s hand. A large man-hand. His largeness was over seven feet tall. He had a beard that hung to the middle of his chest. His face was caked with dirt. Shitty sooty dirt. He was wearing a grey satin robe that was also filthy, stained yellow and green in places, holes the size of golf balls appeared there and here. His teeth were the color of morning eye-crust and they were piranha-like in shape. His nose looked like a circumcised dickhead and it drooped down over his mouth, bobbing up and down as he moved. He wore a perpetual scowl, the corners of his mouth off-white and dry. The sound of his breathing was a high-pitched moan. Like a hound with a freshly broken leg. He set his gaze on me and a gust of freezing wind pulled itself across the earth.

He was a warlock. They call it a warlock and he was one.

“This is my garbage can, you son of a bitch!” he said.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“Say again?!” he bellowed.

“I said ‘sorry,’” I said.

“That’s right,” he said.

“But fuck you,” I said.

His face broke into a maniacal puzzle of twitches, curls, and snarls. He raised an arm to the sky and summoned a giant mutant pigeon down from a rooftop. The pigeon landed on his shoulder and immediately shat on him, the white fecal liquid running down his arm like a toddler on a slide.

“This is Ernst,” the warlock said. “He’s here to kill you.”

With that, Ernst flew toward me, his pink talons spread wide as mouths, ready to rend and tear at my flesh. I quickly lunged to the side, fell to the sizzling concrete, and rolled away from him as he soared over my body, his claws missing me by inches. Ernst whooped and cackled, shitting on everything he flew over – mailboxes, cars, no parking signs. The warlock watched in contentment, his arms folded across his body, his lips tangled in a putrid smile like two slugs fucking.

“ARGHHHH!!!” I screamed, knowing the city would never hear me.

Ernst came diving in, his beak open and excited. He was aiming for the prune in my chest. That poor little thumper. Yes, Ernst was gonna’ tear my heart out and eat it and then shit it out like it was nothin’ at all. It would be just another grey-white blotch on a playground somewhere. Something for a dog to sniff at or a mother to tell her kid to stay away from.

I held my arms out and grabbed Ernst by the wings. He seemed shocked at this, as though no one had ever dared attempt to thwart him. I used his surprise to my advantage. I wrestled him to the ground where he cried out and lunged at me with that dirty purple beak. I pinned him by his shoulders but his will was strong. I could feel his talons grating my stomach, drawing blood, hurting. He drove his beak toward my neck. The snaps of his bird jaws were like gun reports reverberating off the bricks and windows.

I mustered a lil’ extra sauce from my jar and broke one of Ernst wings. It made a jagged, unnatural sound and he screeched screeched screeched. I moved my mouth toward his neck and bit down, tearing through the feathers and into the neck-meat. I ripped his head right off his body and spit it out toward where the warlock stood. Blood ran down the corners of my mouth and my eyes turned coal black and spun in their sockets. The warlock stared at me, his mouth agape, an unfamiliar fright seeping from his pores.

“Looks like Ernst is gonna’ need another head,” I told him.

“No one has ever bested Ernst,” he told me.

“There’s a first time for everything, asshole,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said. “And now it is time for you to die.”

He let out a concise fart, gathered himself, and rushed toward me. I ducked and put my boot heel in his kneecap. He yelped and staggered. He moved toward me again, this time with a limp. I slipped his lunge and threw a left to the side of his head. It struck his temple and I heard something pop in there.

“No one has ever bested Ernst!!” he yelled.

He collapsed to the ground and the metropolis shook a virgin’s last virgin moment.

I leaned over him and wailed away with right and left hooks to his muhfuckin’ face. I could hear the bones in my little hands shattering with each blow that struck him. I tore the skin across my knuckles on his wiry beard. Sweat exploded from my face and onto his. I worked on that face till it was useless as a watermelon rind, a three of diamonds, a politician’s handshake.

The warlock. Was dead.

***

That night as I lay in my bed, I asked the Earth, my only god, to forgive me for the killing of Ernst. He was, after all, an animal, a bird, and I felt incredible remorse for his death. I wept a bit, got up to take a shit, checked me email on my cell-phone, and got back into bed.

My window was open and I could hear the far away cries of millions just like me. Looking for a way out with both eyes closed.

NYC, NY (4/30/09)