Audio Short Story: Stafford’s Hands by Bosley Gravel

AUDIO SHORT STORY

Stafford’s Hands

A Tiny Little Novel in Black and White

by Bosley Gravel

Copyright 1994 Bosley Gravel, All Rights Reserved.

read & recorded by DLKeur for The Deepening, copyright 2009 DLKeur, All Rights Reserved.

 
(For the hearing impaired, here’s the text version.)

From The Deepening, my name is Dawn. Today I’m reading from one of Bosley Gravel’s Tiny Little Novels in Black and White.

Bosley Gravel is one of my favorite literary authors–a brilliant mind and a gifted writer.

You can find Bosley on the Net at www.ripcot.com. That’s r-i-p-c-o-t dot com. And, of course, you can usually find him lurking by the lamppost near the entrance to Artist’s Quarters at The Deepening.

Now, without further pause, is Stafford’s Hands, A Tiny Little Novel in Black and White by Bosley Gravel.

Things growing are not ripe until their season;
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason

Shakespeare

Chapter 1

He met her at a high school dance in his senior year. It was a sixties theme and she was wearing a yellow and blue dress. He didn’t believe in love at first sight but he did ask her to dance. So they danced an unremarkable dance and passed the dragging time and even laughed a little towards the end.

He saw her at school the following Monday and she shared a bag of potato chips with him. He appreciated it, but it was only potato chips and he soon forgot about it.

Some days he would see her with her friends and say “Hi.” Other days she was invisible to him and he didn’t think about her at all. Once he found her in the library, frustrated over a Quadratic Equation.

“I hate math.”

“It’s not so bad,” he said, “It just takes a little getting used to.” She smiled and that made him feel good. He sat down and helped her.

“Algebra is a lot like poetry,” he said, “There’s a lot of rhythm and meter. First you have to become comfortable with the numbers…. There’s an equation that works every time, and you always get two answers, sometimes they are negative and sometimes they are positive.”

She found Algebra, like poetry, could be enjoyed.

 

Chapter 2

A week later, feeling alone, he called her for a date. They went to a terrible B movie and laughed at the tasteless gore. When he was driving home he said, “Do you remember the part when the kid got his hands cut off with a machete?”

“Yes,” she said.

“It made me feel sick.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

He kissed her at the doorway. It was an unremarkable kiss, which did not linger.

“Thank you for the movie,” she said and went inside. He drove home and didn’t think about the date.

Next week he called her again and they went out for hamburgers at a fast food place. He said he knew a place where they would sell him beer if she were up for such a thing.

He bought a twelve pack and they drove up to a hill that was notoriously known. They looked out at the city.

“It looks like a butterfly nestled on a wasteland,” he said. “It looks like a lake full of fireflies. It looks like a magical thing.”

He got drunk and felt her up, which was unremarkable. She was pretty; her body smooth with youth, but it was still unremarkable. He swerved a lot when they drove home. He was praying in his head the whole way. They got to her house and everything was okay.

“Good night. It was a remarkable evening,” he said.

“Good night,” she replied.

“Do you want to go out next weekend?”

“Sure, call me.” She went inside. He didn’t believe in “love”, but he did believe in “like”, and he liked her, but it was an unremarkable like.

 

Chapter 3

Summer came and she spent a month with her grandmother. She wrote him letters and he wrote back when he remembered. He didn’t think of her much, but in some dim way he missed her.

She called him when she got back and he asked her on a date. He had a bottle of whiskey and they got drunk. He knew how to get her naked without her really knowing it and he did. When he was inside her, she spoke in a drunken mumble.

“Do you love me, Stafford?”

He didn’t want or know how to explain about “like” and “love”, so he said, “Yes, I do love you.”

Thus, losing concentration, he ejaculated and pulled himself out. They were at an awkward angle in the car, so it was really impossible to get it out in time. When they got situated he looked down at his flaccid self, and saw a layer of blood and semen covering his hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “It was my first time.”

He cleaned himself with an oily rag and they got dressed.

He felt sorry that it had happened. It seemed he had broken something that wasn’t his.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

When they were at her doorway, he kissed her on the cheek.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said and tears welled up inside him.

I’m sorry,” he said and walked back to his car his hands trembling slightly.

In the morning it didn’t seem so bad. It had really been an unremarkable event. He called her and said “Hello” and she was pleasant and sweet. They talked for a while, but for some reason he couldn’t keep track of his side of the conversation. So he excused himself saying that he needed to mow the lawn.

He didn’t want to think right now, so he mowed the lawn, even though it didn’t need mowing.

Later that evening he went out with his Best Buddy and they smoked pot out behind the water tower just like when they were kids.

He wanted to brag about the sex he had last night, but it didn’t seem very glorious under the veil of marijuana. It seemed sad; it seemed scary. So he didn’t say anything at all about it. Instead he told his Best Buddy about a movie he had seen once.

“. . . and she cut off his hands with a machete.”

“Yeah?” his Best Buddy said, “With a machete?” And then his Best Buddy laughed and Stafford got mad and thought this was not really his Best Buddy. He didn’t let on though. He laughed with his Best Buddy.

He laughed so hard he got tired and decided he wanted to go home. So he left his Best Buddy cackling behind the water tower. When he finally got home he fell into a nervous sleep and dreamed about a machete cutting off his hands.

 

Chapter 4

He didn’t call her during the next couple of weeks. It just didn’t feel right. He started to look for a job; his father didn’t allow slackers, who lie around all day writing poetry in his home. He eventually found employment washing dishes in a small cafe just outside of town.
He came home from the first day exhausted. The phone rang and he didn’t feel like getting up to answer it. A moment later his mother called him,

“Stafford, you have a phone call. It’s her.”

He picked up the extension.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“How are you?” He asked.

“Fine, but not really. I’m pregnant.”

She started weeping.

“How do you know for sure?” he asked suddenly feeling chilled.

“I went to the doctor.”

“Oh,” he sank back into his chair.

I don’t . . .” he said.

He made a small prayer in his head.

“Will your mother let you come out?”

“Maybe. Hold on,” he heard her put the phone down. Minutes turned into hours. Finally, “Hello, Stafford? Yes. But I have to be home by midnight.”

“Okay, does your mother know about . . . ”

“No,” she said fiercely.

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

“Good bye.”

He drove over to pick her up. They drove aimlessly around town each in a separate world of thought.

“Do you want to get married, ” he said, “Or have an abortion?”

She started crying.

“You don’t love me.”

“I do,” he said.

Her tears dried up. He could smell vanilla on her. He liked that. He looked at her long black hair and compared it to silk. She was beautiful. He liked that.

“Stafford, I love you.”

He liked the fact that she loved him. That was nice. Love was remarkable. He offered his shy hand. She took it and smiled sweetly.

“I’m scared, ” he said, but that was not what he meant to say at all, what he meant to say was “I’m numb.”

 

Chapter 5

He pushed for more hours at his job. He worked harder; he worked smarter. They each told their parents. It was a difficult thing for Stafford to do. His father didn’t believe it was really Stafford’s child. Mother just cried. He told them they were going to get married.

“You hardly know her,” Mother said.

“Imagine the financial burden,” Father said.

“But I love her,” Stafford said.

His father roared something, but he didn’t really hear it. His mother wept even more dramatically. Stafford went to his room and wrote poetry.

 

Chapter 6

The next eight months went by in a blur of double shifts and separation of his body from his mind, his mind from his thoughts, his thoughts from himself. He opened a back account and saved $2500. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get started.

They got married at the courthouse. His Best Buddy bit his lip to keep from snickering at the ceremony. Afterwards, when he had a moment alone with his Best Buddy, his Best Buddy said, “Now you’ve really done it, Stafford.” And he knew this was not his Best Buddy anymore.

The wedding was a solemn occasion, a very solemn occasion. They moved into a shabby apartment complex the next day.

It was a winter afternoon when she gave birth to a little girl with hazel eyes, Stafford’s eyes. He watched his child being born and poetry flowed across his mind, “The child is perfection. The child is a castle that I shall build. The child is a secret that I shall know.”

At the same time he was thinking these things something darker was creeping around him. Something a thousand volumes of poetry could never capture. He couldn’t name it, but he thought it might be love.

 

Chapter 7

There were times he thought the crying would drive him crazy. There were too many sleepless nights to count. He was overworked and crazy. He drank too much. He couldn’t write a line of poetry. He kept having nightmares of being sewn into his wife’s womb. He had nightmares about his Best Buddy cutting off his hands with a machete and laughing like a madman. He liked to get drunk. He liked to mindlessly work. His wife tried to help him rest, but he couldn’t sleep. He would never let the dreams come again.

 

Chapter 8

He got a different job, it had less hours and more pay. He punched sheet metal eight hours a day and got drunk every night. He loved his daughter. She was the apple of his eye. Her little fists were flower buds, her skin as smooth and pink as rose petals. She cried a lot. That got on his nerves, but it was okay.

One day he was warming her bottle and his wife came into the kitchen. She said he was doing it all wrong. That the bottle was too hot, that he would burn his daughter. She called him a stupid drunk and he didn’t say anything at all. He tested the bottle on his wrist. She was right. The milk scalded him and he cried out in pain.

“I was never meant for this. My hands used to write poetry, now they punch holes in sheet metal. I was never meant for this.” He yelled much louder than he intended. His daughter was crying. His wife had a strange gleam in her eye.

“You did this,” she said, “You did all of this!” And she scooped up her daughter, packed her things and went home to her mother.

“Good bye,” he said.

She slammed the door.

It was good riddance, he thought, I never wanted that.

His life was empty without them, but it wasn’t that empty, for his hands were made for poetry and song, for smoking pot behind water towers and caressing young women in back seats, for eating hamburgers and mowing lawns. Looking back he found his whole life had been unremarkable, but remarkable at the same time. This whimsical notion of wasted years faded before his eyes.

His own stubbornness had wasted his youth; by his own hand he had condemned love. Perhaps poetry was hidden in places he hadn’t thought to look. Could it be that poetry could be found in sheet metal, if a poet handled the sheet metal? He liked that idea, it felt right. It felt true. He called his wife and asked her to come home. He could hear his daughter crying in the background, while his wife asked the haunting question:

“Do you love me, Stafford?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do.”

That was Bosley Gravel’s Stafford’s Hands A Tiny Little Novel in Black and White, and I’m Dawn, coming to you from The Deepening, on the Net at www.TheDeepening.com.

Thank you for listening.

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