Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

This was the Dixie circuit–it was noth­ing for a Peter­bilt to pull off the inter­state with a six hun­dred pound rat, two-headed goats or a Don­key Woman nurs­ing horsey-faced twins. Leviathan was the first whale me or Jimmy'd ever seen, coated in a slick layer of cot­tage cheese look­ing stuff. It just lay there. No posters of liv­ing whales or Shamu with a beach ball on his nose or instruc­tions on how to behave in such a beast's pres­ence. Just a bloated whale in a bed of formalde­hyde, get­ting hauled through towns like Lonoke, a skinny boy stand­ing on a ply­wood plat­form bark­ing, "See Leviathan, Mon­ster of the Deep. Today only." Right there in the Knight’s Gro­cery park­ing lot on a Fri­day after­noon, peo­ple cash­ing pay checks, push­ing sil­ver carts right up to the ticket booth to lay money down and see.

This was spring­time, and every barbed-wire fence in Lonoke County was blown over with hon­ey­suckle. I was six­teen, get­ting dri­ven around in Becky Mallison’s Gold Grand Prix, ZZ Top play­ing out the moon­roof. She was a senior cheer­leader with cold black hair, and my mother had hit the ceil­ing when she’d showed up at the front door in cut­offs and nip­ples show­ing through her hal­ter top.

"Would you like to drive around?" she asked through the screen door, the car keys jin­gling in one hand. 1976, the year the great tor­nado ripped the roof off our post office, so mail got up in the jet stream and they found our stamped let­ters on the glit­ter­ing ice fields of Canada.

I said, "Can I, Mama?"

O.W., my step­fa­ther, was dead-heading home, his truck emp­tied of slaugh­ter­house turkeys.

"Okay," she said. "If Jimmy goes."

Becky said, "Fine," and the three of us walked out and got in her Grand Prix, drove over the rail­road tracks and there it was on the left, a slate grey trailer with a scarred head painted on its side.

We cut into the park­ing lot, cruised into a park­ing place and pulled the E-brake. "Want to see?" she asked, and smiled this wide smile. One of her hal­ter straps had slipped and she was tan already, and her teeth were white and even. My kid brother and I got out, fol­lowed her up to the fold­ing table where the truck dri­ver sat with a cigar box, twenty-five cents magic mark­ered on the flap.

My pock­ets were empty.

"Here," Becky said, and passed over a dol­lar. "Go first."

I climbed the steps, Jimmy at my heels. Leviathan's arrival was an annual deal. Some­how it'd got out that the thing could com­mune with the spirit world, so every­body and their momma came to stand in line.

Jimmy pointed. "These idiots believe it talks to dead people."

A lady up ahead of us lay down talk­ing to the whale's head. She'd got down on her hands and knees, put her mouth up close to one of the filmy eyes. "Daddy?" she was say­ing. "Can you hear me? Are you listening?"

"Shit," Jimmy said. "Who'd p-pay for that?"

Behind us, Becky said, "Me."

The woman on her hands and knees was crying–the grief was hard on her, you could tell. I won­dered what I'd have to say to the whale's head when my time came. I was think­ing about the other-worldly feel of get­ting your ass kicked, how Momma's face looked like inside the car the time O.W.’d killed it on a rail­road track, got out, shut the door and walked away, how Momma'd sat there and hummed "Moon River." until he disappeared.

"They sing," Becky said, the three of us up to the twin blow holes now. Above, a sign said Leviathan was also known as Devil Fish, Gray Back, Mus­sel Dig­ger and Rip Sack. The fifty-foot cow was per­ma­nently blind, the sign said, from swim­ming over mus­sel beds on her side, scrap­ing up Goliath mouth­fuls. "They can hear each other for a thou­sand miles."

Jimmy and I looked at each other. Out­side, some­body racked off muf­fler glass-packs– O.W.'s Chevy, it sounded like.

The woman cut us a hard look. Then she turned back to the whale, put her lips to the fetid face and kissed it. "I know. I know you didn't mean to, Daddy. I fer-gid you."

It was embar­rass­ing, the whale's eyes like greasy saucers.

We didn’t talk on the way home. The car was quiet and hot. Sum­mer was on us. I had a job in concrete–a car was in the works. O.W. was mow­ing the grass when we got home–that look in his eye.

Becky let us out. "That lady was bonko," she said, looked me square in the face. "Call­ing that thing Daddy."

Michael Gills was McK­ean Poetry Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas and Ran­dall Jar­rell Fel­low in Fic­tion in the MFA Pro­gram at the Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina-Greensboro. He earned the Ph.D. in Cre­ative Writing/Fiction at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Oxford American,Verb 4, Shenan­doah, Boule­vard, The Get­tys­burg Review, The Greens­boro Review, Quar­terly West, New Sto­ries From The South and else­where. Why I Lie: Sto­ries (Uni­ver­sity of Nevada Press, Sep­tem­ber, 2002) was selected by The South­ern Review as a top lit­er­ary debut of 2002. A 2005-06 Utah Estab­lished Artist Fel­low­ship recip­i­ent, Gills is a con­tribut­ing writer for Oxford Amer­i­can and a board mem­ber for Writ­ers @ Work. He is cur­rently a pro­fes­sor of writ­ing for the Hon­ors Col­lege at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah, and is mar­ket­ing a sec­ond col­lec­tion of sto­ries, THE DEATH OF BONNIE AND CLYDE, the title story of which appears in the cur­rent South­ern Human­i­ties Review.