W.J. Donahue, “Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life,” 7-31-18
Writers: Attached is thenext chapter of my new novel, “Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life.”
As a reminder, each chapter will be preceded by a vignette about a certain breed of snake (hognose snake, reticulated python, king cobra, etc.), including a brief description of its personality that somehow relates to the chapter. I like Chris Bauer’s suggestion about moving these vignettes to the end of chapters, which I will likely do. For this time, however, it’s still at the front.
As a reminder, the story’s main character is Sid Carver, whose life has pretty much fallen apart after getting caught in a long-dead affair from an old paramour. He has since lost his job in insurance (and been blacklisted), gotten divorced and been separated from his two children. He now works in construction for an old friend. He also has an affinity for snakes and other reptiles.
I would appreciate your thoughtful criticism. Thank you in advance for reading.
WJD
#
Worm Snake, Carphophis amoenus
Regarded as a burrower, the shy worm snake makes its home beneath flat rocks and rotting logs, in loose soil, or among leaf litter, where it feeds almost exclusively on earthworms. The worm snake prefers forested habitats, and is common to deciduous woodlands in the eastern United States. Because of its small size and lack of a venom apparatus—or virtually any other means of defense—the worm snake often falls prey to raptors, scavenging mammals and even other snakes.
Chapter Three: New Skin
Sid’s hands didn’t seem to want to cooperate with the tasks his brain was telling them to do. In fact, they seemed to no longer work at all. Not even the simple request to bend his index finger seemed a possibility. Each mitt was a wretched mess: fresh scrapes as pink as cotton candy crisscrossing his palms, dark purple blood blisters marring his wrists, blood-crusted sores in the cradle of each finger.
He had picked the wrong day to misplace his work gloves.
The unmerciful sun hovered in the cloudless sky, a big white ball on a field of cornflower blue. The temperature was nearing ninety degrees Fahrenheit—a rarity for March, even in southern Virginia—and the rising humidity weighed on him like a stone.
Sid wiped the sweat from his brow as he exited the all-timber skeleton of a would-be carriage house. He seemed to be the only one on the job site maligned by the temperature shift. A dozen other workers, most of them shirtless or sleeveless, moved without complaint, swinging hammers, scaling ladders, looking busy. Then again, most of them were half Sid’s age—a point he saw no value in underscoring. His pitiful work performance was proof enough.
Sid made a beeline for Henry Wilk’s maroon pickup. His eyes homed in on the faded yellow Igloo jug hanging over the lip of the open tailgate. As his finger depressed the small button above the spigot, a trickle of water splashed the dry dust on his boots. He bent at the waist and let the stream rinse the grime and sweat from the back of his neck. As the chilled water coursed through his body, a strange sensation settled in his pelvis. He suddenly had the urge to urinate.
“Oh, come the fuck on!”
Jackson.
Sid’s workmate for the day, Jackson was one of those people who tried to make his own star shine brighter look better by calling attention to the faults of others. At least that was Sid’s assessment. Jackson was twenty-three, maybe twenty-four years old—still a dumb kid, still too dumb to know any better. They had spent the better part of three hours breaking down pallets of cement board and then shuttling seven sheets into each of the three would-be bathrooms in each of the twenty-two would-be carriage houses, where someone else would hammer them onto the walls to frame out outsized showers. So far, they’d supplied enough cement board to fifteen of the twenty-two shells of homes, and Sid was beginning to think getting to the final seven just might kill him.
“Pick up your game, dude,” Jackson said. “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”
For the first few trips, they had carried two sheets of cement board at a time—turning both of the stacked half-inch-by-three-foot-by-five-foot panels of Klamath-brand panels on their sides, Jackson the one end, guiding them, and Sid on the far end, shuffling backward, trying not to trip over his untied shoelaces—until Jackson, weary of the sloth-like pace, noticed Sid’s sweat-speckled brow. He’d joked, “Please don’t have a heart attack on me—not on a Friday.” They had switched to singles after that, but Jackson insisted they had to double their pace to make up for it.
Chills snaked up Sid’s spine. His heart raced. He thought he might throw up. Jackson was less than understanding, of course. Whereas Sid’s energy waned, Jackson’s young body showed no signs of tiring. And now, apparently, Sid’s thirty-second break was somehow threatening to infringe on Jackson’s post-workday social life. Never mind the fact that the sneaky son of a bitch had disappeared into the Johnny on the Spot for more than an hour before lunch—either sleeping off a hangover or working his way through an epic shit. Either way, the kid seemed to have rebounded.
Sid bent and placed his mouth over the spigot, drawing in as much of the lukewarm water as his belly would permit. He then let the water cleanse his hands, then sloppily washed his face. Salty water dripped from the tip of his nose, his lower lip. He exhaled a breath and wandered back to the pallets.
His mind wandered to a time when he wasn’t so much different than Jackson, at least in terms of age. After he had weathered the unpleasantness of adolescence, of his teen years, of the unrelenting tedium of high school, he’d had a good enough idea of where life would take him. Oh, if he could turn back the ticking hands …
He thought of his early accomplishments, of the skills he had taught himself back then; of the friends he had gained, though at the time they were more like brothers, despite their many failings; of the upward trajectory of his life, as a twenty-two-year-old musician, if that was the right word, in a band on the rise; of the notoriety he was beginning to acquire, and the time and money he’d forfeited in the quest to acquire it; of the nights he’d had to pass, all too slowly, in hotel rooms with squeaky beds and stained sheets, worn carpeting, and filthy toilet bowls, in undesirable neighborhoods in the likes of Trenton, New Jersey, and Kingston, Rhode Island, or hanging out with friendly squatters in partially boarded-up hovels in Philadelphia and Baltimore; of seeing his friends-slash-brothers destroy themselves one bag, bottle, or pill at a time.
And then he thought about the day he’d walked away from it all and started over, because he had to, because he hadn’t been able to envision a life beyond his twenties—not if he had stayed on the same course. He’d been right about that at least, as two of the friends he had been closest to had given their lives over to their appetites. The fact that he’d cut those friends out of his life long before their mothers had to bury them had haunted him for years. Even now, decades later, he wondered if he might have done something to prevent Death from claiming them.
Look at me now,he thought.Despite my best thinking, I’m back in the same exact position: starting over all over again, only this time I’m almost fifty years old, working alongside brainless brutes like Jackson what’s-his-name. I’m hardly qualified to give anyone advice. Let the moron make his own mistakes. Let the moron waste his life if he so chooses. He’ll fare no worse than I did.
Jackson already had another of the forty-pound cement-board panels ready to go. He ground the treads of his boots into the dirt, trying to let Sid know he was done waiting.
“We still got seven more stilts and another two pallets of this shit to get through,” Jackson said, stilts being the boss’s pet name for his framed-out carriage homes. He wiped his brow with the bottom of his Virginia Tech tank top and then ejected snot from one of his nostrils.
As far as Sid knew, Jackson didn’t go to Virginia Tech, had never gone to Virginia Tech, would never go to Virginia Tech—or any college, for that matter. No, Jackson’s future was clear as glass, as far as Sid could tell. The stupid kid would happily spend the rest of his twenties at a carousel of construction sites, then find a girlfriend to impregnate, have a kid or two, find a mistress, grow a beer belly, go gray, and then, before he knew it, he would be Sid’s age, more than half his life trailing in the rear view. And what would he have to show for it? Sid wanted to grab Jackson by the throat, smack him silly, and tell him to do something with his life, something more than this at least. He spat at his feet.
“Pick it up, old man,” Jackson said. He hoisted the cement-board panel a foot off the ground.
Sid smelled alcohol in the sweat oozing from Jackson’s pores. He curled the fingers of each hand, to make sure the digits still worked. Jackson started walking before Sid was ready, and the bottom edge bit of the panel made a groove in the dirt. As he leaned into the edge of the cement board, he lifted the board between his palms, fingers pointed north, as if in prayer. His forearms trembled from the effort. Even though each board weighed no more than forty pounds, the toll of having moved so many in this sweltering heat meant each one might as well weigh a ton.
“Up and up,” Jackson said, and he heaved the cement board so he could get his hands beneath its lower edge, right beneath the K in Klamath. The sudden movement caused Sid to lose his grip, and panel’s top edge stabbed him in the sternum. He winced and backed away before the panel could do any further damage. The panel’s lower edge slammed into the dirt. The corner snapped, seeding the earth with crumbles of concrete. Jackson released his grip, likely just for the show of it, and the board cracked in two, each half flopping flatly to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust.
“Nice job, numb-nuts,” Jackson said.
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Sid snapped. “I’m taking a minute.”
Sid cupped the ball of his shoulder. He rotated his right arm in a tight circle, trying to work the pain out of the joint. He then massaged the center of his chest, where the edge of the cement board had assailed him. He’d probably be digging bits of rock out of his breastbone for weeks to come. He huffed to the far corner of the lot, where browned grass met the dusty asphalt, to one of the few remaining spots with any natural shade. He took a seat beneath a small stand of butternut trees, his back to the one of the trunks, and eyed his destroyed hands. A drop of rose-red blood dangled from the middle finger of his right hand.
The first finished carriage home stood across the lot. All-fieldstone façade. Three-car garage. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Immaculate landscaping. A ten-foot-tall sign advertising THE CARRIAGES AT KIRKLAND, 3500 SF, STARTING IN THE LOW $400’S, with twin starbursts promising indulgent value-adds such as DESIGNER FIXTURES and CUSTOM CABINETRY and ELEVATOR-READY. The development was Henry’s idea of a desirable life in the lap of luxury, the kind of place where affluent empty nesters could come to die—the kind of place where Sid and Lydia likely would have settled, had their marriage not imploded, after Tern and Murrelet had absconded to college.
He expelled a breath, trying to keep himself from screaming.
A presence loomed before him. He lifted his eyes into the sunlight. A silhouette stood dark against the white.
“Everything peachy?”
It was Henry Wilk, Sid’s longtime-friend-turned-boss. They had known each other for the better part of a decade, a former neighbor from his old house in Stony Brook. Everyone else on the job site referred to Henry as Hank, but the name just didn’t sound right to Sid’s ear. He figured it was easier to not call his boss anything at all.
“Hey,” Sid said.
“You all right?”
“Just dandy.”
“Jackson says you’re slowing him down.”
“He said that?”
“Ad nauseam.”
“That’s ’cause Jackson’s a little prick of a shit stain.”
“Well, is he a prick, or is he a shit stain?”
“Why can’t he be both?”
Henry placed and hand on Sid’s shoulder and took a seat beside him.
To Sid, it seemed Henry had barely broken a sweat. The only proof he’d done any real work whatsoever where the traces of sawdust caught in the hairs of his graying temples. The unmistakable scent of laundry soap wafted from Henry’s clothes.
“You sure you’re up for this kind of work, Sid-o?”
“Don’t give me that shit. I’m motoring along just fine.”
“You need to motor faster.”
“Time’s money. You don’t have to tell me. It’s my fucking hands …”
“Maybe next time you won’t leave your gloves at home. What’s my one rule?”
“You don’t have to be a prick, too. Hank.”
“Don’t I?” Henry lowered his volume. “That’s pretty much my job title. If I ease up on you, these guys are going to see that and eat me alive. As you said, time is money, and I have a lot of people coming to me with their hands out.”
“Seems to me it’s more than that.”
“Well, Lydia’s my friend, too. It’s none of my business, but—”
“But you’re obliged to kick me in the balls every chance you get. Might as well line up like everybody else, I suppose.”
Henry stood and walked back to the nearest framed-out structure, which was beginning to resemble a finished carriage house.
“Check beneath the passenger seat in my truck,” he said, his back to Sid. “Might be an extra set of gloves in there.”
“Eat shit,” Sid said under his breath.
“Heard that,” Henry said.
Sid strode out of the shade, back into the hot sun. As he returned to the waiting pallet of cement board, he saw Jackson’s caulk-caked shorts make a hasty retreat into the Johnny on the Spot.
###
The dark cloud followed Sid as he ascended the stairs. His lower back throbbed. His mouth dry, his hands swollen and bleeding, his foot numb from where Jackson had dropped two sheets of cement board, he wanted nothing more than to lay down and put this abortion of a day behind him.
As he reached the final landing that would lead to his apartment, a large cardboard box blocked his path. Though barely legible, the words RANDOM SHIT were scrawled in black magic marker onto the box’s side. Sid wagged his head at the box, just one more example of the day’s many indignities. A female mannequin, naked other than a spiked codpiece and black makeup reminiscent of Gene Simmons’s KISS demon, was propped against the nearest wall—his wall. What sounded like loose pots and pans clanged together as he kicked the box aside. Then the door to Unit 3A creaked open.
He gasped.
She wore a loose-fitting gray T-shirt with the profile of a meowing cat on its front and purple shorts with yellow lines in the shape of lightning bolts up each side. She hadn’t bothered to don shoes. Her hair, done up in pigtails, was mostly caramel brown, with streaks of blond, black, and, if Sid saw correctly, hints of turquoise. She had no bra on beneath her shirt. Sugary pop music trickled through the seam of her open door.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Let me move that. I’m—” She took a breath. “What the hell did you do to your hands?”
“Long day,” he said, holding his hands as if he were a surgeon who had just performed a surgical scrub.
She winced at the looks of them.
He cradled his keys in his right hand, and turned toward his door.
“I’m Holly,” she said to his back. “Your new neighbor, I guess.”
Without turning, he added, “I’d shake your hand, but …”
“No worries.”
He went to key his way into the door, but the key ring slipped from his hand and dropped to the carpet. “Fuck,” he hissed.
She shouldered him aside and said, “Let me help you, silly.” She immediately found the right key—it was one of only two on the key ring, the other being the Toyota-logoed key to his Camry—and inserted it into the lock.
As she went to turn the doorknob, Sid stopped her, saying, “I’ll manage.” He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.