THE SAME STORY
by barry graham
“If it looks like we were scared to death, like a couple of kids just trying to save each other, you should've seen it in color.” — Jamey Johnson
Our house was big, red brick, with off-white walls that watched over us while we slept, while we prayed for our souls to be kept, while we shared bath water and bunk beds and the secret of the back closet we will die with and never reveal. Paradise. 1987. Cows and corn stalks and Phillies baseball. Cow shit and dry feed corn and Mike Schmidt, more specifically, if you really feel like bothering us with the goddam specifics. 1987. Iran-Contra and the Cold War and Reaganomics. Everything was overpriced but baseball cards and penny candy and our house because it sat too close to a chicken hatchery, which only means something if you've been to a chicken hatchery. At night, hundreds of baby chicks are disposed of in a big blue dumpster and the lid is closed until they suffocate together and die and wet rot like infected mucous and you smell them decomposing through your bedroom window and their desperate unorganized chirps give you nightmares until you burn down a different hatchery in a different town twelve years later and you try explaining all this to the district court judge but he doesn't care or doesn't understand or the last defendant just told him the same fucking story.
But that first night, after you've been fingerprinted and photographed and you've dressed in to the county oranges and been placed in a holding cell, and you've claimed your spot on the cement floor underneath the payphone beside a drunk hillbilly and a Mexican who doesn't speak English or know why he's there, and you've taken a shit beside both of them, and you've made your phone call to your momma begging for bail, and you've refused the cuisine, soy burger, no bread, mixed veggies, a box of raisins, and sugarless tea, and you finally get called upstairs to settle inside your cell, only then will the chirping stop, only then will you sleep soundly.
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At night, hundreds of baby chicks are disposed of in a big blue dumpster and the lid is closed until they suffocate together and die and wet rot like infected mucous.
Description is a bit too good. I'm feeling queasy.
Wow. I want more of this. Is it part of a longer story and, if so, can I please read it?
rachel & dave:
thanks for the kind words. this is the first page in a novel i'm working on. and i appreciate your enthusiasm but i cant let you volunteer to read that thing. i would overwhelm you with sloppy pages.
Still love this, Barry. Still waiting to read pages three and four and five... When you're ready, of course!
Nice, Barry. This drew me in so very well. I think it's an excellent novel opener!! xo, H
you already know i love this. ready to read more.
Very cool, love the pace. I would definitely read more.
Real good stuff...
Dig it. I especially love the Phillies baseball 1987 section and baseball cards. Takes me right back to that space and time. I still remember the wood paneled Topps cards from that year, and yes, the cards were still cheap: Upper Deck hadn't entered the scene and completely changed things yet.
The whole thing is great, but that really brought out the card-collecting geek in me.
yessss the 87 wood paneled topps. i also remember the 87 donruss. with the white back ground and the red and blue streaks/blobs all over them. was that 87?
still cheap and still came with a stick of gum. i still remember the whole phillies starting line up from that year. good times. glad someone appreciates it.
you still collect? i just collect rookies now. mostly football. i scour flea markets and garage sales for old boxed sets you can sometimes find for cheap. wal-marts and k-marts are good for that too.
I still have a ton of cards, but... here's the suck part. When I got my driver's license, I thought I should be spending more money chasing girls, so I sold a lot of my older cards. I started collecting again in college, but not as voraciously. The best parts of my collection now are my Cardinals, going back to a couple tobacco cards, a few really great Bowmans from the late 40s, and then starting up with Topps around '53 or '54. Best part of that album is that Lou Brock is followed immediately by Ernie Broglio, showcasing one of the most lopsided trades in the history of the game. Good times.
man, i dont have shit that old. i had a bunch of yogi berra's that i got rid of in high school. oldest thing i have now is from the 70's. have lots and lots of 80's rookies. give them guys time to get in the hall and i should be in good shape holding onto them. i have lots of qb rookies of guys playing now or recently retired. aikman, young, favre, p. manning, brady...
I love the cards from the 70s. Started collecting in '73, and I still have a huge soft spot for those cards.
very nice intro, B. stays w/ me.
I think I too will have nightmares of the ill-fated chicks
Wow - this is amazing. I won't shake this quickly.
thanks everyone for the great comments / feedback. i really appreciate it.
Barry, it's a good one. Thanks for posting it here.
Spook city. Haunting. The world hold banal horrors most will never know. Nice job.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPz9o8x-bLqc-OwmcMPoaeJvlswQD9AEI2EO3
Immediately thought of this story when reading the article. You and Lauren going to set up a Dogz group?
After reading the same story, I'd love to see the rest of the story. Wow. Just wow. That sad unorganized chirping is definitely the stuff of nightmares.
simply a great story.
thanks, arlene and joshua, for the kind words.