writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

dirt fc This writing was accepted for publication
in the 84 page perfect-bound issue
of Down in the Dirt magazine

To order this, click on the link below:
Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

Order this writing in the book
(bound)
Down in the Dirt
prose edition
(bound) cc&d poetry collection book order the
5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book

order the
8.5" x 11" ISBN# book

Danny Burnham

Michael Henson

    “I thought you had it in the back.”
    Alan Mabry had just watched Danny Burnham hoist a five-gallon bucket of paint off the tailgate of a pickup truck. Danny Burnham was a red-faced block of a man with a graying red mustache. He paused a moment, then slung the bucket up three steps and through the stone-linteled doorway of a row-house apartment building.
    “Therapy, my brother,” said Danny Burnham. “They teach you how to lift in therapy. What about you?”
    “I never got no therapy,” Alan Mabry said. “Just pills.” He was a taller man, angular and spare. He pulled a second bucket of paint from the truck and lugged it up the steps and through the door.
    A woman picked up a tool box from the truck and followed. She was as broad-shouldered as Danny Burnham and she wore work boots and coveralls. She set the toolbox down and went back to the truck without a glance at either of the men.
    “They give me the pills too,” said Danny Burnham. He had gone a little redder in the face and his voice had just a touch of a wheeze to it now. “But I’m trying to stay off the motherfuckers.” He slung a bucket of drywall mud off the truck and up the steps and through the door.
    “Oxys?
    “Oxy-motherfuckin-Contin. They’ll mess with your head and they’ll break your heart. They’ll tell you sweet stories, then they’ll kick you when you’re down.”
    “I don’t much care for pills myself,” Alan Mabry said. “I throwed mine down the toilet.”
    Danny Burnham twitched his mustache and arched a brow. And if he meant to say something, he thought better of it.
    The woman stood now in the bed of the truck. “Hand me that drill set,” Danny Burnham said to her. Silently, the three emptied the truck of tools, lumber, pipe, and other supplies into the building.
    “What else you gonna need?” Alan Mabry asked.
    “A couple brooms. A mop, a mop bucket. Some Spic and Span. A mattress to sleep on.”
    “It’s a mess,” Alan Mabry said. The building had long stood empty. Every word, every step echoed. An odor of piss and broken plaster rose around them. “You sure you want to stay here?”
    “We got nothing else,” Danny Burnham said. “Not now.”
    He glanced toward the woman with his twitch and arch, but she had pulled out a cigarette. She concentrated very hard on the lighting of her cigarette and inhaled long and deep.
    “It ain’t much,” Alan Mabry said.
    “We’ve seen worse. Haven’t we?” Danny Burnham glanced again to the woman, but she looked away and exhaled long and slow.
    “We’ve seen worse,” Danny Burnham said again. “Me and her can knock this out in about a week or two. That’ll just about get us back on our feet.”
    Alan Mabry looked through the room to a back window where a plywood board had been pried loose. “They done stripped every bit of copper pipe out of here.”
    “Well, then, that’s where we’ll start.”
    “You still got electric.”
    “Good, you got a little hot plate or a microwave we can use?”
    Alan Mabry nodded. “I’ll have em cut the water back on in the morning. I don’t know what you’ll do for a toilet til then.”
    “We got a bucket.”
    Alan Mabry nodded.
    “Like I say, we’ve seen worse.”
    “Come around to the Paradise in the morning. I’ll have Donna make you breakfast.”
    Danny Burnham nodded thanks. He looked around at the bare walls, the fireplace with the mantle stripped away, the wallpaper stained and split, and asked, “How much did you pay for this?”
    “An arm and a leg and a pint of blood.”

*


    The woman watched Alan Mabry drive away in his pickup truck. Then she asked, “What the hell have you got us into now?”
    “I got us into some money.”
    “It don’t look like money to me.”
    “I’m telling you, I got us into some money.”
    “You got us into some pissy-smellin pit of nothing.”
    “At least we got a roof over our heads.”
    “But no water. What the hell was you thinking of when you stole all the copper out of here?”
    “I was thinking, I’ll get paid on both ends. Once for sellin the copper out and once for puttin it back in.”
    The woman looked away. She folded her arms and stared down the street. “You’re a scheming son-of-a-bitch.”
    “I schemed us a place to sleep for the night. Hell, we slept the last three nights in the car.”
    “Which we don’t have no more.”
    “That’s okay, babe,” he said. “I got a plan to turn this around.”

*


    “Not bad for two days work. What do you think?”
    Two days, and there was now a working kitchen and a bedroom with a mattress in each corner — a small one in one corner and a larger one in the other — and a television set up on a milk crate.
    “I think you’ll do better without that boy,” Alan Mabry said.
    The boy was in the back yard working a hand saw against a two-by-four. He was sixteen or eighteen, shirtless, lean as a ferret. His jeans were slung low on his hips and the tops of his plaid boxers rode high. He was tattooed in several places on his chest and arms in no seeming pattern.
    “That boy,” said Danny Burnham, “has helped us sweat the pipes back in, get the water back on, and the first floor cleaned up to where you could just about live in it.” Alan Mabry had to admit, “It don’t look bad.” The smell of urine was gone and replaced by a smell of cleaning fluid and fresh paint.
    The boy cut through his board and it clattered to the ground. He picked it up, eyed it, and came with it into the kitchen.
    “Wassup, Alan,” the boy said,
    “What’s up, Tommy.” Alan Mabry looked away quickly. The boy passed through the kitchen and went up the stairs. Alan Mabry surveyed the room again. A toolbox stood open near the door. He stopped and looked. “Where did you get your stud finder?”
    “I’ve had it for years,” Danny Burnham called from the next room.
    Alan Mabry glanced toward the stairs where the boy had gone. He shook his head and gestured Danny Burnham to come closer.
    “Whatever you’re payin that boy,” he said, “comes out of your cut.”
    “Well, I . . . .”
    “I hired you and I hired your woman. I didn’t hire nobody else. I ain’t payin nothing extra for Tommy Perdue.”
    “All right. All right. He’s strictly on my dime.”
    “And I never said nobody else could stay here.”
    “Is that a problem?”
    “I don’t want him here.”
    “Why in the hell are you goin off on me all of a sudden?”
    “Cause you let that little weasel of a boy stay here.”
    “And what’s the problem with that boy?”
    “He’s a damn thief and a snake. And I don’t want him in my building.”
    “If I’m rentin this place . . .”
    “Which you’re not.”
    “It’s the same thing.”
    “Then show me your lease.”
    “You hired me to fix this place up and I’m fixin this place up and this boy is helping me get it done.”
    “But that ain’t the agreement we had.”
    “Fuck your agreement and fuck you. Fuck you and fuck this building. Fuck you six times crosseyed.”
    He would have said more, but the woman cut in.
    “Danny, hush,” she said. ‘It’s his building. He can do what he wants with his building. He give us this place to stay and he give us the job, so hear the man out.”
    Danny Burnham stared away. He jammed his hands into his pockets and he stared out the window to the alley behind.
    Alan Mabry looked the other direction. “Let him stay,” he said.
    “He don’t have to stay. I can send him on.”
    “I said, he can stay.”
    “I’ll tell him, pack up your shit and go. He don’t have that much, so it won’t take long.”
    “Goddamit, he can stay.”
    “Danny,” the woman cut in. “He said he can stay.” Danny Burnham nodded. He twitched his mustache and nodded again.
    “You two been arguing like this for years,” the woman said.
    “Let him stay, but whatever he steals is on you.”
    “I’ll watch him like a hawk,” Danny Burnham said. “I’ll be on him like white on rice.”

*


    “Now I’m gonna show you how to get this right,” said Danny Burnham. He pointed to a length of two-by-four and Tommy Perdue brought it to him and laid it across the saw horses.
    The woman interrupted from the doorway. “I’m goin to work,” she said. She was in the uniform of a fast food restaurant.
    Danny Burnham twitched his mustache and said nothing.
    “Did you hear me?”
    “I heard you.”
    “Well, I’m goin to work.”
    Danny took a tape measure, put the tag on one end of the two-by-four, and stretched the tape out to thirty-seven inches. It hurt him in the small of the back just to bend over, but he said nothing about it.
    “Somebody’s got to bring in some money here.”
    “I told you, I got this covered.” He marked his spot with a pencil, then motioned toward the tool box. Tommy Perdue pointed to a level, a stud finder, and a chalk line before he came to the square.
    “It’s been four days and we ain’t seen but a few dollars.”
    “You get paid when you finish the job, that’s how it works.”
    “And how are we supposed to eat until then? I could have used your help.”
    “Not now you don’t. You got Tommy.”
    He turned toward her — carefully, for it hurt to turn — and he raised his brow and twitched his mustache.
    “I got to go,” she said.
    He nodded and turned back to the two-by-four. “Let me show you,” he said, “how to make that cut.” With the square and pencil, he drew a straight cut line across the board. Then, with an eye to see if Tommy Perdue was watching, he set the saw to the line and cut. But it hurt his back to bend in the cutting position, so he handed the saw to the boy.
    “You’re gonna have to finish this for me,” he said. He handed off the saw, stepped away, and put his hands to the small of his back to try to rub out the pain.
    He watched Tommy skip and skitter the saw over the board, then proceed to cut aslant of the line.
    “Is that all right?”
    Danny Burnham nodded. He was wordless with pain. It’s all right, he thought. It’s as good as it’s gonna get.

*


    “You said you’re payin him, but I ain’t seen you give him any more than a buck or two to get him a sandwich.” The woman still wore her fast food uniform.
    “They treatin you all right so far?”
    She shrugged.
    “I mean, you could ask Alan for a job over in the Paradise. I could say something to him”
    She shook her head. “Never,” she said. “Not if I was starving.’
    Danny Burnham shrugged this time. He looked away.
    “I asked you, how are you payin that boy?”
    “I got him covered.”
    “Alan Mabry’s nickel and dimed you for a week now, so how you gonna pay this boy?”
    “Alan Mabry is a tight-fist miser-ass son of a bitch, but he’ll pay what he owes.”
    “You wouldn’t need a boy to help you if you hadn’t gone and showed off that first day.”
    Danny Burnham chewed on his mustache for a moment.
    “Slingin five gallon paint buckets like they was nothing.”
    “It hurts like a motherfucker,” he said.
    “So how you payin this boy?”
    “I already paid him.”
    “With what? Your good looks?”
    “You remember they give me a scrip for Oxy when I tore up my back?”
    “You said you wasn’t gonna take em.”
    “And I ain’t gonna take em.” He nodded for emphasis. “But I filled the scrip.”
    “You’re feedin that boy those Oxys?”
    “One a day. Just enough to keep him from getting drug sick.”
    “You’re working that boy for an Oxy a day?”
    “What if I paid him a hundred dollars a day? Do you know what he’d do?”
    “How can you do that?”
     “You and I both know he’d go straight out and blow it all on Oxys.”
    “I can’t believe you’re payin him one a day.”
    “And then he’d probably overdose hisself.”
    “You’re workin that boy like a dog for an Oxy and a baloney sandwich?”
    “And a place to sleep.”
    “And a place to sleep.”
    “Nobody else would take him. His own mother’s put him out.”
    “An Oxy and a baloney sandwich and a place to sleep. And Alan Mabry pays for the baloney sandwich and the place to sleep.”
    “And the insurance paid for the Oxys. I tell you, babe, I got this figured out.”
    The woman shook her head. She took out her pack and hammered out a cigarette and lit it and shook her head.
    “You’re a scheming motherfucker,” she said. “You’re a scheming mother fucker.”

*


    Slowly, the pain in his back unraveled and Danny Burnham thought he could sleep. It was long past midnight and the city was silent but for a distant siren and a drift of music from a house down the street. The lights were out at the Paradise CafÉ and in most of the houses around him. Cheryl, his woman, lay asleep on the mattress in one corner of the room and Tommy Perdue lay passed out on the smaller mattress in the other. The woman murmured and grumbled in her sleep and the boy wheezed and twitched and between the two of them was the throbbing in his back, Danny Burnham could not settle down.
    As ever, the pain had worried him awake and left him nauseous. As ever, he thought about the pills. If he just took the pills, it would all go away. But he had a better plan for the pills. Instead, he pulled out his bag and his papers, rolled a nice fat joint, and smoked.
    Slowly, the pain unraveled and he could think. He thought about the work he had done that day and the work he had yet to do tomorrow. All that work, and not a single good word from Alan Mabry. That son-of-a-bitch Alan Mabry. He silently cursed Alan Mabry until he had cursed him out of mind.
    The pain had unraveled and the world had backed up. He sucked down the last of the joint, got up from the stoop, went in the house, and crawled back into his bed. The woman next to him continued to hum and grumble in her sleep, but that would not bother him now. The pain had unraveled and he had thought out everything he needed to think out and he was ready to sleep.
    But the boy had continued to wheeze and to twitch. It’s the asthma, Danny thought and he tried to sleep through it. He had slept through it before. But there was something wrong this time to the rhythm of it and when Danny listened closer there was a cackle in the boy’s breath that should not be there. He wheezed and twitched and cackled like a man close to drowning and Danny Burnham was worried out of sleep all over again.
    The Oxys should have knocked him out, Danny Burnham thought. They should have settled him right down. He should be sleepin like a baby.
    He walked to the boy’s side and stood, weed-fuddled and wobbling, and listened. Wheeze and cackle, wheeze and twitch, wheeze and cackle. There was surely something wrong. The woman must have sensed it. She came over, rubbing her eyes and cursing softly. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What’s goin on?”
    “Run down to the firehouse,” he said. He knelt down and touched the boy’s brow. “This little motherfucker’s gone and overdosed.”

*


    “And how’s he gonna overdose on one little pill?”
    The ambulance and the EMTs were gone. The police were gone. Alan Mabry, who had heard about it somehow, had cursed his way down to the house and now he was gone too. The boy’s mother had come in tears and she was gone. Danny Burnham sat on the stoop and tried to figure out an answer.
    The woman did not wait. “I got to get up in the morning,” she said, and padded off to bed. She threw herself down on the mattress and pulled the covers up over her head. In a moment, she had mumbled herself to sleep. Danny Burnham looked up the street and down one more time, then walked back to the kitchen. He had no idea if the boy would live or die. The police had questioned him hard. Alan Mabry had given him hard looks. And Cheryl had had hard words for him. He was beat-down tired, but his back had begun to throb again. There was no way he could sleep.
    That boy, he thought, should have been flat out sleepin like a baby. He had gotten hold of more pills somehow. He didn’t know how the boy did it, but he know what the boy did.
    He wanted to check. He moved a toolbox and looked at the floor beneath it. Everything was where it should be. He’s good, he thought. He knows what he’s doing. He pressed with his toe on the edge of a floorboard and the board came loose. He knelt, reached into the space between the joists and there was the pill bottle, just where he had hidden it. He was surprised to see that it was still there. Surely, if the boy was going to steal, he would have stolen the whole thing. But, just in case, he reached for the bottle and gave it a shake. Empty. It was empty.
    His back throbbed like a clock. He gripped the empty pill bottle in his fist and it carried him through a wave of nightmare pain that rose, nearly capsized him, broke, and subsided. He wanted to wake her up and tell her, Honey it hurts so bad, but she had that morning shift; he could not bear to wake her.
    So he gripped the pill bottle and shivered through another wave of pain and cursed his luck. He cursed his luck and Alan Mabry and the boy Tommy Perdue.
    That scheming little motherfucker, he cursed. That scheming mother fucker.



Scars Publications


Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.




Problems with this page? Then deal with it...