Twillbear

Okay, okay... I know I should probably be working on "Brother Far Away", but this showed up, and I decided I'd put it up. It's far from finished, but I thought I'd run past you what I have, while I have it. Isn't that the way it goes with stories sometimes? They're there, then they're not... I don't know what the title will be, I usually don't decide until they're finished, but for now I've put it in Word as "Twillbear" so I could remember where I stuck it. I'd be interested in any comments you'd care to make. Thanks...

“Forty years is a long time to carry around that sort of load, don’t you think?” The corner of the matchbook cover served as a damned fine file, its sharp tip fitting neatly under Twillbear Hopkins’ dirty fingernail as his focus shifted from nails to Shirley’s reddening face back to the job at hand, never stopping to stare or demand an answer. Twillbear and Shirley, once teenagers heaving and thrusting and sweating and grunting in the backseat of his brother’s GTO in answer to the ages-old hormonal demand for release, now relied mainly upon booze to scratch their itch, content to belabor every point and assuage each other’s battered sensibilities with clichéd bromides and Dr. Phil psychology. “Haven’t we been friends long enough for you to share that with me? Good God, Shirley, have you ever stopped to think about how your life, and mine, could have been different?”

For her part, Shirley expected the reaction, she knew he’d react this way, once told. Biting her lip, she grabbed the hand that held the matchbook and held it in place, forcing him to make eye contact with her. “Twill honey, what would you have done different if you’d known? I’ll never forget how your hair flowed behind you when you took off on your Harley, your heart achin’ for the open road. I didn’t want to be an anchor on your ass, the reason why you couldn’t get out of this God-forsaken rat hole of a town. Hell, Twill, that bike was more part of you than your family… or me.”

Jerking his hands away, not angrily but firmly, Twillbear stared back at her. “Is that right? So, let me see if I understand this. I knock you up— and rather than tell me, you decide that since you’re the world’s only seventeen-year-old professional psychologist, you don’t need to inform me that I’m gonna be a daddy so I can be a part of whatever decision you ultimately decide to make. Does that about sum it up? Yea, you’re probably right… ol’ Twillbear is so shallow, a baby ain’t near as important as his goddamn motorcycle.” Grabbing the shot glass filled with Jack Daniels, Twillbear put it to his lips and jerked his head backwards, allowing the bourbon to rush down his throat, the glossy fire warming his esophagus and temporarily stifling his mounting anger before thudding to a stop in his stomach lining.

“But I’ll tell you one thing, lady… you might just as well have shot me in the back as I drove away, because now, besides living every day with the knowledge that I never had a son to bounce on my knee and teach the cool way to do wheelies, I’ll also know that I might have had the opportunity, had you had the balls to speak up once in your life. I’m as dead as dirt, I just ain’t layed down yet.” Setting the glass back on the bar, Twillbear Hopkins grabbed his cigarettes and stood up, all the while fixing his vacant glare at the woman staring at her beer.

Without looking up, Shirley shouted at him, “That’s right, cry me a river. It’s always all about you, isn’t it? Do you honestly think that a single day has passed that I haven’t regretted my decision?” Then, the anger suddenly passed, she made eye contact with her friend, “And you’re right, Twillbear Hopkins, forty years is a hell of a long time to carry that kind of guilt around.” Shaking her long bangs out of her face, the defiance returned. “But I was the one carrying it, not you. So please spare me the histrionics at this point, will you? Frankly, it makes you look a bit smaller in my eyes.”

“So this is how it ends between you and me? You sashay in here, find a time when you think I’m in a good mood, shoot a heat-seeking missile right up my ass and expect me not to say nothin’? Sorry, but it don’t work that way. Okay, yes, I’m raisin’ hell, but in this case I don’t consider it whinin’. What do you want from me, sympathy forty years after the fact? I’ll have you know I’d have raised that kid, Shirley… I’d have given him my name, I’d have played catch with him just like Ward Cleaver and I, by God, would have chosen him over a crazy infatuation with a motorcycle. But you didn’t give me a choice. You played judge and jury and decided I wasn’t fit to raise your kid, and, Shirley, I’m havin’ a little trouble understandin’ why, because I know it wasn’t because I drove a motorcycle.”

“You’d have played catch with her, Ward.”

“Wha--?”

“She was a little girl, dumb-ass; dolls, pink pajamas and ribbons in her hair, even in high school.”

“She’s… she’s in high school?” Twillbear’s brain, usually acute and reasonably adept, refused to process the information.

“Was, Twill… was in high school. She graduated in 1983.”

His legs suddenly unsteady and starting to shake, Twillbear Hopkins sat down on the barstool next to Shirley to keep from falling on the floor. Slumping against the bar, he tried to yell for another drink, but nothing came out except a dry shriek, so he slapped the bar several times with the palm of his hand, causing drinks to shake and angry customers to swear at him.

Shirley put her arm around his neck and kissed him softly on the cheek. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Twill… honest, I’m not. But we need to talk, and not when we’re drinking. She needs help, Twill...”

***