*Fiction — September 15, 2022
The Oxbow Rivalry
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Grampa Rawls, The Old Trout, old Rawls Bernard Lee IV, was pointing at his son across the living room with his fingertips mustard-stained yellow from his lunch. Food that had been palmed into his mouth straight from the refrigerator: flaps of cold bologna rolled up in his hands, squirting classic yellow French’s straight on the roll and clawing pickles from the jar, taking sips of red wine in between, staining his lips and teeth purple.
“I still have steam enough to drop you,” Rawls said. “I’ll kill you all.”
His son, his oldest of two, Bart, had his hands up. The old man had wondered how such a pansy had been born of his nuggets.
His younger son, Darby, was not that way. Darby had a wicked girlfriend named Toyoda who rode with him on the back of his ‘69 Indian Chieftain Classic. He manufactured crank out west with The Bastards of Bacchus Motorcycle Club, his skull patches staring death on his leather vest, his club-name alias tattooed on Toyoda’s arm. Ten-Tun, his biker clan had named him.
Bart, however, sold office furniture to the coiffed asses of cubicle weenies.
“Dad, we talked about this,” the wimp said, snot of his loins. “Have reason here,” Bart begged.
“I got reason to kick you in your plums,” he said, yellow fingers still pointed towards the window. “One of them is sitting on my stoop, probably looking greedy-eyed at my damn car.”
“Dad,” said the wimp, “Dad.”
BJ, the grandson, sat outside on the stoop with music in his ears so he did not hear the yelling. And, as the old man predicted, he was looking over at Grampa’s Buick, dented harshly on the front end but still a workable set of wheels. Freshly turned seventeen, new hairs on his lip, the boy was hoping the Buick LeSabre would be his to drive home.
Rawls had been involved in a police chase and had recently lost his license. The old trout was hard of sight and ears, but that never stopped him. He’d torn through town in his LeSabre on his way back from the package store. He drove sixty in a thirty zone, with George Thorogood pounding through the limp, beaten speakers.
Rawls didn’t notice when the first police cruiser pulled out behind him, lights and sirens going. When the two backup cruisers joined the pursuit, he took them as a challenge. He extra-stepped-on-it and made a circuit around the whole county, finally slipping onto the freeway where the State Police joined the fray. He had a fleet of lawmen on his trail. He was laughing about it, laying on the horn for them.
They bumped the old man off the road into a ditch and surrounded the Buick on all sides.
When it came to court, Rawls testified to being a batty old man who had mixed up his medications. He’d had a fit of pharmaceutical insanity, and put on a whole show of it.
Since loss of license would not keep Rawls from driving, Bart had decided they should give the Buick to BJ, under the agreement that the boy would drive his Grampa around when needed. BJ agreed, but when Bart first told Rawls, he tried to stab his son with the butterknife he’d been using to scrape paint chips off the living room wall. A week later, the son returned with the whole family as backup.
“I gave Ronnie Oxbow a cranial contusion in his brain that sent him to Saint Joseph’s,” Rawls said, grabbing for his son’s pleated shirt.
“Dad, you’re going to hurt yourself driving like you do,” Bart said, backing across the room, “or kill someone else.”
“Safe? Safe is a wuss-word. Don’t use safe on me, wuss,” Rawls said, rearing back to punch his son with all force. He decided on the high-road and went for saliva instead. The Old Trout honked a loogie directly at Bart, who went down on his knees.
“Get up,” Rawls said, “Get up, I barely winged you.”
“My eyes sting,” said Bart. “What would mom think? She’d want you safe.”
“Don’t use your mother on me, crap-worm.”
“Vicky would always say she wished you took better care of yourself,” Susan said.
“You don’t say that name. Get the name out of your mouth.”
The old man boomed out of the living room. He pushed aside the daughter-in-law, Susan, and went out to the stoop where the grandson sat. BJ had his hair long and straightened and primped, hanging in a perfect curtain over one eye. He looked half a woman. Like some city weirdo might pay good money to have his primped hair smell-up their pillowcase and wet their sheets. He had black makeup under his eyes, black polish on his nails, and jelly bracelets that went all up his arms.
The old man yanked the headphones out of Bart Jr.’s ears. When he mouthed protest, Grampa gave him a slap. BJ went red on the cheek.
“Look with both eyes on me. Both eyes, I said.”
BJ pushed his fringe away but it was no use, so he tilted his head back and looked from beneath the hair at Grampa Rawls. The old man stood in stained gray slacks with suspenders and a sagging wifebeater shirt showing his tufts of white chest hair.
“You want to be a man when you’re grown?” Rawls leaned in close.
“Yes,” BJ said, thinking of the Buick.
“A real man?”
“Yes, Grampa.”
“Yes, Grampa,” Rawls mimicked, then spat to the side. “I know you don’t know nothing about being a man, since your two mothers there wouldn’t know nothing about it. Don’t shake your head at me.”
By then, Bart was standing in the doorway with Susan behind.
“I can learn.” BJ felt that his impending manhood was directly linked to him getting the car. He also knew that a lecture on masculinity or a single utterance of the word ‘problematic’ would turn the old man to stone.
“Well, listen then,” Rawls said, then pointed to the LeSabre. “What’s that there? What would you call that thing sitting over there?”
“A car?”
“That’s a man’s car, and the man it belongs to is me. It’s my property. Understand?” he said.
BJ nodded.
“Now what right do you have to take a man’s car? Huh? I won that car off the piss-baby sonuvabitch Ronnie Oxbow in a fishing contest. Before you were a little swimmer even. I won first prize in the county for my record Largemouth and Ronnie had to hand me his pink slip off our bet. Have you done that to deserve my vehicle?”
“No.”
“No’s right,” Rawls nodded, “you were raised by a pansy—I wouldn’t expect you to know about winning. You’d know more about hair jelly.”
BJ felt his chances for the car slipping away.
“I could learn,” the grandson said, “from you.”
Rawls squinted at the boy. BJ was very careful not to flinch or show fear. Grampa nodded his head and his jaw moved around as if he were chewing something.
“Fine,” Rawls said. “Maybe, fine.”
The boy tried to be still and absolute.
“We’ll see,” Rawls said, “See if you don’t end up a second-generation pansy.”
Bart and Susan edged out the door, past the old man. They drove away, with Bart in their shiny hybrid and the BJ in the Buick with Susan. She looked very relieved to be going from that house. He had never liked the woman. She bored the piss out of him, and he warned Bart against marrying her, telling him a boring woman brought only a life that likely would end in the coward’s release.
Her people came from Pennsylvania. He suspected Quakerism.
The old man went inside for more wine and to fix a cheese sandwich. He peeled off the films from several slices of the plastic orange cheese and threw them on the counter while he stared at the empty space where his Buick had been. His rolling claim to dominance over his rival, the coward Ronnie Oxbow, was gone. Just
as Ronnie himself had been gone five years past.
as Ronnie himself had been gone five years past.
The loss of his Buick didn’t effect the old man much day to day, since he soon after bought an old Honda dirt bike from his neighbor, a 450-CC, four-stroke—a bad machine, not in terrible shape, but old and misused, not running. Left out in the yard. This fact only made it easy to strike a bargain with the boozed-up alky family down the street. Rawls had retired as Regional Director of the Hampshire County Trout Hatchery with full pension and had plenty of dough squirreled away. More than enough for several bikes.
The old man had learned much about the combustion engine, all kinds, from his biker son, Darby, and got the thing running in a few short days. He took it down the roads around his neighborhood, wearing the hooded motocross helmet, slacks and suspenders up over his wifebeater shirt, looking like a Bastard of Bacchus atop his predatory vehicle.
He would make his way down to the liquor store for jug wine and peanuts. If he saw a policeman in a cruiser, he would offroad-it and ride through the woods where they couldn’t catch him.
Afternoons, he took an Igloo cooler full of nightcrawlers and Lake Chub to Unionville Pond, where he pulled sleepy fish from their homes with rod and tackle. He took his catches, alive, to St. Mary’s where he’d dump them gasping on Ronnie Oxbow’s grave, and let his back wheel tear up the grass as he left.
The first time Rawls called BJ for a lift was weeks after the family had driven away with his car. The bike had stopped running, and he needed to go into town for parts, and for ammunition for his .38 revolver.
He spent the morning on his back porch of the house with the .38, ripping up wonderbread and breading the lawn to shoot the birds that came. He sipped red wine straight from the gallon jug with a cigar between his teeth, spitting brown flakes of tobacco on the yard. Besides birds, he also had rabbits to shoot at. There was a small, unkempt vegetable garden in the back of the house that Rawls kept strictly for the purposes of attracting the rabbits.
When the chill left the soil, he would buy vegetable seeds in paper envelopes, toss them out onto the dirt patch from last year and rake over them. He had no cares about what grew and what didn’t. Sometimes he stewed the birds and the rabbits, but most times he shot aimlessly and missed because of his murky eyes.
It was here on the deck that BJ found The Old Trout when he came to escort him in the LeSabre. Rawls had freshly breaded the lawn and thrown birdseed when the bread ran out. He took regular breaks when wracked with fits of wet-cough, which ended when Rawls would spit rust-colored saliva over the railing. BJ had his hands over his ears as he came out to the deck, the old man firing at a fat group of Mourning Doves.
“Grampa?” he said.
“Dumpus?” Rawls said, turning, “come here, dumpy.”
BJ came forth to where the man leaned against the house. The old man’s breathing rattled through his body. Spider-veins ran along his chest and neck, his skin having the quality and color of old parchment.
Rawls emptied the barrel of the .38 into a bucket and began loading more, the last he had in the box.
“Toss some of that birdseed on the grass, will you?” Rawls said.
The boy grabbed the bag and did so.
Rawls held out the cigar to his grandson. The boy refused. “Have it your own way,” he said, shaking his head, thinking strike one. But the boy surprised him and brought out his own pack of cigarettes.
It wasn’t really about the tobacco, Rawls wanted to explain, but found himself too clumsy at the mouth. Too much wine had already been there. It wasn’t about drinking or tobacco, he was thinking—being a man, that is. It was about doing what you wanted to do. If you liked drinking and smoking, you had your consequences for those, but they were consequences for you to accept alone if you wanted them.
All went unsaid as the teenager smoked next to him. Rawls had six new rounds in The Special and the Mourning Doves had come jonesing again for bread and seed—stupid, fat targets they were.
BJ looked at his feet. He tried to convince himself that Grampa was too blind to hit any of the birds, which was mostly correct.
Rawls held the gun out for BJ, who stepped back.
“Take a shot or two, boy,” Grampa said.
“I wouldn’t like to,” BJ said.
“Why in God’s Hell not?”
“I’m vegetarian,” said the boy.
“I ain’t asking you to eat the fucking thing.” Rawls would never think to stew a Mourning Dove, by God, they were near pigeons.
“I don’t like to see them hurt.”
“Aim for the head, then.” He said, then, seeing that his grandson wouldn’t take the pistol, fired a loud report into the grazing birds. Rawls watched the boy’s face: it scrunched and strained but he did not look away or cover his eyes. The old man had respect enough for that. The birds flew away except one that sputtered in the grass, and he’d emptied the gun of ammunition. “I don’t see why you can’t pretend not to be a wimp for five seconds.”
“I don’t see how killing things is supposed to be fun,” BJ said. The Buick was his, and he was fairly confident the old man couldn’t take it back.
“Go start the car, then,” Rawls said. “Damn it.”
When BJ had gone away inside, Rawls went down to the bird and twisted its neck before throwing it into a barrel with the heavy lid. He kept birds and squirrels in there, saved them to be placed into his large cage-traps and snares around the yard. He wanted to catch a coyote or a fox maybe. He wanted to breed foxes and coyotes together and keep them as feral sentinels on his property.
The Old Trout looked around the deck to ensure that BJ was in the car, then snuck into the house. He kept his pill chest hidden under the sink. He sat on the floor of the kitchen placing various medications on the linoleum in front of him. Of all the various colors and capsules, not one of them was something fun. He often considered taking the hero’s death, going off everything and dying pure. Die honest with grease in his veins and smoke in his lungs.
After swallowing down his pills, Rawls put on his wrap-around sunglasses and frontier hat. He put on a jacket over his wifebeater shirt, the .38 tucked in his waistband, and stepped out onto the front lawn showing wine-stained teeth to the sun. BJ started up the Buick as the old man stepped out.
The car, Rawls found, no longer had the sediment of sunflower seeds, sand, and stale tobacco on the floor. It had been vacuumed all away. But the cab still had the smell of smoke and menthol. On the radio, he could hear high voices screeching over guitars and drums.
“Turn this pansy crap off my speakers,” Rawls said, reaching for the dial.
“My speakers,” BJ brushed his hand away.
“I could take you, you know,” The old man said.
“You like hitting kids too?” BJ looked straight ahead.
“You’re basically a man already,” Rawls backpedaled.
“I thought I was a wimp.”
“Get us moving,” he said, shifting in the seat. “Wise-ass.”
“Where?”
“I’ll worry about where, you just drive and I’ll tell you where.”
The car rolled backwards down the dirt driveway and pulled onto the road. The road, like the driveway, was unpaved, and full of large rain divots, deep and rocky, liable to blow a tire out if you weren’t a careful driver. Rawls, instead of being cautious, had always made a game of speeding down the rough terrain and avoiding those holes, and liked to brag that he had never once popped a shoe.
“Easy on the brakes,” the old man barked, “they’re old suckers.”
BJ nodded.
“And don’t be ginger on your turns. I haven’t got all day—speed ‘er up.” He was watching his grandson’s face. BJ’s jaw was tight, but his eyes were clear. Part of what he wanted the kid to learn is that many people, himself included, were bastards. And a man didn’t sit still when treated harsh in a bastardly way. Rawls would’ve been most proud if BJ had belted him one.
“Be easier if I knew where I was going,” BJ muttered.
Rawls chucked his teeth.
Oxbow’s Hardware was not busy. Never was. Rawls went there habitually half in hopes that he’d find the store out of business. It was a wooden shack of a structure, a hotbox steaming on that summer day. Ronnie being dead, the place was run by his son-in-law, a guy almost as big a dink as Oxbow had been.
Oxbow’s Hardware was not busy. Never was. Rawls went there habitually half in hopes that he’d find the store out of business. It was a wooden shack of a structure, a hotbox steaming on that summer day. Ronnie being dead, the place was run by his son-in-law, a guy almost as big a dink as Oxbow had been.
Rawls had attended Oxbow’s wake in his best suit, smiling like he was there to claim a cash prize. He shook the hand of Oxbow’s daughter with great enthusiasm and clapped the dumbstruck son-in-law on the back. The old man flicked Ronnie’s nose in the open casket before he left, taking with him a handful of the mortuary’s mints from their crystal dish.
The old man made a point of coming into Oxbow’s Hardware to hassle the young pup, Trevor. Ronnie’s son-in-law who took over the store. He didn’t remember Trevor’s last name.
“Stay here,” he told BJ, “Keep that engine running.”
The boy was typing something into his cellular and didn’t look up.
“You swapping smut pictures with your boyfriend over there?” Rawls chuckled.
“Yeah,” BJ said, looking his Grampa in the eyes.
Rawls looked at the boy for a long moment, unsure of himself. “I’ll be back,” was all he said.
He got out from the LeSabre and walked into the store. The pup was behind the counter, and his young shoulders seemed to deflate as he saw the wine-stained smile of Rawls walk in. The old man went down beside the counter to grab a bag of birdseed, though he needed none.
“We aren’t having any trouble today, right Mr. Lee?” Said Trevor.
Rawls let out a laugh. Mr. Lee, that always made him laugh, thinking that Oxbow, the dead fart, must be rolling in his grave knowing his son-in-law had such good manners.
“Not at all, pup,” Rawls said, picking up the sack of seed. “What’s your last name anyway?”
“Sambeau,” answered Trevor Sambeau.
“Did that girl of yours take the name of Sambeau? Or did she keep Oxbow?”
“She hyphenated them.”
“Hyphenated, huh?” he grinned. “Is it Sambeau-Oxbow, or Oxbow-Sambeau? Sounds hinky either way huh? I would’ve done away with any affiliation with Saint Ronnie, if it was me. The bastard.”
“You make a habit of insulting dead men in their own places?”
“I make a habit of cussing that sonnabitch as often as possible.”
“Better man than you, Ron was.”
“Yeah, well what in the hell would you know about it, Sambeau?”
“Just the seed then?” Trevor asked.
“Give me two boxes of the .38’s,” Rawls said.
Trevor placed the boxes down on the counter and rang them up. “That’s gonna be forty-two-fifty,” he said.
“Just hold up a damn minute,” the old man said, digging in his pants. He could see behind Sambeau, on the wall, a newly hung picture of Ronnie, from years ago, holding his fishing rod in a braggy way, hips thrust forward, laughing. Laughing. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from that ugly mug laughing, probably at him. At Rawls. Rawls remembered that day on the lake. He remembered pulling the biggest fish once again while Ronnie grab-assed with the wives and got lush on wine coolers.
Vicky, Rawls’s late wife, had been there. Had been on the beach blanket with the women. He remembered. The dark came on the lake, and the bugs. Rawls got a rhythm going with his casting and swatting at the skeeters. Pump, slap, release, pump, slap, release, cast way out into the water. All the whiny quitters dispersed.
“Mr. Lee?” went Sambeau, but the old Trout’s eyes were stuck.
The fish in the bucket almost too heavy to carry up the ridge. He remembered his arm feeling like it might come off. He’d give the fish to his black market buddy to sell to the restaurants. The Buick had been parked at the trailhead.
“Mr. Lee?”
The trailhead, set off to the side, the tire marks all around from where the others had left. Ronnie’s Buick parked there still, slow music playing inside, the suspension making noises like a tortured box spring. His Vicky and Ronnie Oxbow together in the Buick. Rawls, needing some kind of death, holding himself back from the car somehow, went out to the woods, bashed in the heads of each fish and threw them back in the water. A few months later he won The Great Summer Fish Fest and Ronnie’s Buick. Won it with the fire of his anger and Vicky’s betrayal. He never told anyone that he knew. Even on her deathbed—even though he wanted to—he never told Vicky he knew she’d betrayed him.
“What the hell did you say?” Rawls asked, finally looking at the kid.
“Forty-two-fifty,” Trevor answered.
Rawls didn’t like the glint in the kid’s eye. “What did that old fucker tell you? Huh? What do you know about him? About me?”
“I don’t know anything, Mr. Lee.”
“You know something. You said he was a good man. A better man than me. Isn’t that the way you said it, Sambeau? What’s better about him?”
“I just meant it as he was good to me.”
“He clue you in on me? Tell you a couple war stories? Showed you the notches on his bedpost?”
“I only meant it how I just told you.”
“Yeah?”
“I swear to it.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Rawls said. His eyes darted over to the photo.
Trevor turned to follow the Old Trout’s gaze. He saw the picture.
“Don’t fuck with me I said,” Rawls pulled the revolver out of his waistband. Sambeau was laughing at him. Had been laughing all along. He knew it. Ronnie Oxbow had passed along his rotten gossip.
Trevor Sambeau backed against the wall. “Hey,” he yelled out, “hey, what the hell, Mr. Lee?”
Trevor Sambeau backed against the wall. “Hey,” he yelled out, “hey, what the hell, Mr. Lee?”
“Look here, fucking Sambeau. Tell me what he told you,” Rawls said. “Did he say it was the best he ever had?”
“Who?”
“You know goddamn who.”
“I don’t,” Trevor said.
“What did Ronnie say about me?”
“What? Nothing. Whatever, just that you were a prick.”
“A prick? A big dumb dummy huh? Said he pulled one off on me, huh?”
“No, none of that. Please, get the gun off me, don’t point it over here.” Trevor was turned away from him.
“Did he ever say the name Vicky to you? Did he ever use that name?”
“Who? No.”
“If you ever heard him say Vicky I’ll end your life right here.”
“My wife,” he was mumbling, “Maggie, she’s just got pregnant. We’re going to name it Ronald if it’s a boy, after—”
“If he’s anything like that sonnabitch I ought to end you right now.”
Sambeau picked up a ball-pein hammer from the counter and hucked it wildly at the man with the gun. The projectile came at Rawls and reflex took over. He pulled the trigger, stumbling to the side. He was on the floor. Sambeau was down behind the counter. The Old Trout couldn’t see him.
“Sambeau? You dead back there?”
“Don’t shoot, my wife’s gonna have a baby,” Sambeau called.
“Grampa?” BJ said, standing at the door. His hair was pushed to the side. Both eyes were fixed on the old man, sitting on the floor with the pistol out in front of him.
“He’s out of his goddam mind,” Sambeau called, “he shot at me.”
“No, hey, lookit,” Rawls said, standing.
“He tried to fucking kill me.”
“Look there’s a thing about it here. This one takes me for a fool. He thinks I don’t know the stuff Ronnie Oxbow was spreading around. What kind of man he was. I knew better than anyone.”
“Give me the gun, Grampa,” said the boy.
“I’ll give you a deviated septum, how about? Don’t you fucking come near me.” Rawls pointed the revolver at BJ. “Just listen for a damn minute.”
“Give me the gun and I’ll listen,” the boy said. His hands were shaking.
“Are you afraid of me? Don’t be afraid, I can’t take it. You weren’t here to see. Just listen. Just for one second.”
“Whoever the other one is out there, my wife is pregnant,” Sambeau said.
“Gimme the gun, grampa. We’ll talk all about it in the car,” BJ said.
“You just have to listen,” Rawls said.
“I’ll hear all about it,” BJ said. He reached out and took the gun. The old man let him take it. He was hunched over, one overall strap hanging down, looking near tears.
“Is it safe?” Trevor Sambeau asked.
“Stay where you are,” Rawls said.
BJ dragged Rawls out of the store and jumped in the LeSabre. It was still running. They drove off through the gravel towards Main Street.
“I’ll kill all of them,” Rawls blubbered.
“Put your damn seatbelt on,” the grandson said. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” the old man said, “I wish I could tell you. If I had any idea I would tell you about it.”
They were passing Chaffins Pond just then. Rawls went through a vicious fit of coughing. BJ took the pistol and tossed it out the window into the pond. Rawls put down his own window to spit.
“That’s best,” The Old Trout said. “That’s probably best.”
BJ did not go back towards the house. That wasn’t the place. He drove towards the main route that ran through the county. The same route where his grampa had given the police their big chase, though BJ didn’t know that. He only knew that they needed movement. They needed to go and not stop to maybe feel that what happened was being left behind, even though eventually they would circle back home.
“Did you ever see your Uncle Darby?” Rawls asked, “You remind me of him.”
“Not in a long time.”
“He came to see me,” Rawls said, “I was the first one he came to see. Him wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt and a clean shave. I barely recognized my own son.”
“Sure,” said BJ, just talking.
“I told him he looked like a suburban wuss. Then he left. Left the house and went off. Told me he was the last I had, and I wouldn’t have him for much longer.”
BJ gave the old man a hard look.
“Maybe.” Rawls said. “Maybe.”
They mounted a hill and jostled down a craggy road, the town reservoir spread out beside the Buick. When he got memories of Vicky in his head he could barely look at water. He couldn’t think about all the things living below the surface. The old man looked away.
“Where the hell are you taking me?” he asked.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.