One Sorry Mess
David Antrobus Posted on Friday, May 2, 2014 at 9:04PM 
More flash fiction. I posted this to Mader's blog again tonight, but honestly, I think this is worthy of an instant rerun, purely because not only does it bleed atmosphere and mood, but it also has a plot—the one area as a fiction writer I need to especially keep working on.
I realise lately I've been attempting to capture the music of American dialect. Its rhythms and melodies, its odd cadence. Not claiming to have gotten it right yet, but each time I do this I hear something new and feel something that frees up my language.
In case anyone's wondering, the setting for this tiny tale is a place called Big Timber, Montana. I stayed there one night, in September 2011. It was actually magical in its low key way, got under my skin. Here it is:
"Supposed to be a rainstorm tonight."
Heading west somewhere past Billings, the only light from a mostly cloudless, deepening ink-blue sky showed up like neon contrails on the railroad tracks. We sat in a diner that squatted like a timid brown bug between those tracks and the interstate, our immediate view a patchwork of choked grass and fast-food trash and signs saying shit like "For Sale 13+ Acres 2 Homes" while dry lightning played in the Crazy Mountains way off. People oughta know something: desperation, like ozone, has a smell.
Those booths were the worst damn booths I ever sat in. Might as well sit on old rusty machine parts wrapped in thin pleather. Or dry bones cold inside ancient skin.
"Well I don't see no storm."
"Then let's keep going."
We paid the squint-eyed girl at the register, even tipped her an undeserved single. Way she looked at Casey made me smile. Like she wanted someone—may's well been him, may's well been Charlie fuckin' Starkweather—to take her out of that town for all eternity and not ever look back.
Turns out we shoulda stayed, even in a fleabit motel the kind you barely ever see no more, since the storm come in after all, and if we hadn't been where we were, we also wouldn't been on I-90 some twenty miles east of Butte when that oncoming 18-wheeler with the sleeping trucker crossed the median in near-slow-motion and took out the RV right in front of us. As well as us. Buncha others too.
My last memories are a compact import pumping blood like a profane heart over a blacktop artery and a violent Montana sky alive with benjamins, fluttering like grey moths, hoping against hope to find some porch light somewhere and maybe settle.
What a waste.
One sorry fucking mess, to tell you the god's honest truth.
Reader Comments (8)
I love those seedy little motels in backwater town. A small oasis of crap usually in the middle of a rich desert of beautiful earth tones littered with vulgar pinks, reds, and blues. I always feel like a part of me should stay there forever. That self loathing part that feels it is too grungy for the world to see. A person could disappear there, maybe trade their life for the freedom of one of those beautiful young waitresses who deserves to see the world through her fresh innocent eyes. The world sometimes seems it is sad to be seen through my world weary ones. This was the perfect thing to read before closing these world weary eyes and contemplating all the endless roads that crisscross this great continent. Thank you.
Ed, that is so well said. I completely get that. I think the contrast between seedy little motels and their inevitably majestic backdrops, especially here out west, adds so much poignancy to so many tales. Especially the kind that feature beautiful waitresses, yes.
David - I happened upon your blog from the piece on the latest edition of The Woven Tale Press. This one and the waitresses you mention made me think of the movie "3000 Miles to Graceland." Loved the mental images you invoked.
Katy, yes, that's weirdly the kind of atmosphere I seem to find myself steeped in, lately; that moody world of love and violence. That rural blue-collar loneliness that stretches from Minnesota on down to Louisiana, a swathe of bleak, sullen, riverbank impressions. I know I'm starting to repeat myself, but it feels like something I need to keep working at for some while yet. Those waitresses will make you laugh and break your heart. And thank you for commenting. :)
Ah, but it wasn't a waste. It's never a waste when something is learned.
As far as it being a mess... yeah. But it makes life a little more interesting, doesn't it?
There sure are a lot of odd little diners across the country, aren't there? With desperate servers. And some of the best, and some of the worst, food you'll ever have. And memories that could be made in no other way.
I'm not sure what North American dialect you are trying to capture; I don't recognize it. It does sound like someone who would benefit from a bit more education, tho. ;)
Ha, Casey, thank you for commenting; that's actually one of the things I'm trying to get across, though (and clearly failing)—that the use of dialect in no way impugns someone's intelligence levels. Perhaps that's my (regional) English background attempting to poke through, and my disgust at the class system that allows such judgements. As for the dialect itself, it's meant more to capture a feel than a specific accent, a rhythm and musicality I hear in vernacular speech. But like I say, if I get this type of feedback, I haven't yet succeeded. Onward. :)
Silly man, you don't even know when you're being teased. You have no idea who this is. ;)
Think for a minute and you will remember. You will never forget me, as I will never forget you. (plus, I can't stay mad forever)
I don't, you're right. No idea. I don't think I know a Casey. Oh, Casey... the fictional name in the story. Now I think I get it. But I also don't mind being teased. ;)
And nobody should stay mad forever, as that would be a horrible waste of a life. Especially if there's no reason to be mad in the first place.