You’re in a dusty bar in western Oklahoma, an outpost at the edge of the Cross Timbers, where the flora turns sparse and freckles the red dirt like an archipelago. The pumpjacks appear as naturally as the dogwoods and serve as a reminder of all the money out there to be had if only you understood the rules of the game.
At twenty minutes to open you’re looking at Al and his Popeye forearms working over a pint glass with a dish rag as he tells Russell, the Sudafed man, about the State Championship game back in ’91. The new millennium’s two months away but this story is still the only reason Al gives two shits about you, the only thing keeping opportunity within reach, and your chest tightens because there’s nothing you can do as Al starts in about the Boston Celtics and that big buck from Ardmore who starts at center – Marcus Moore – who back as a high school freshman already stood at six-foot-ten and was the most dominant player in Oklahoma. This is when Al points to you and tells how we were down in the title game after three quarters when you took the floor to start the fourth and positioned yourself behind Marcus so you could bite the back of his arm so hard the tissues in his triceps rearranged between your teeth. You’re there now. The stunned, violated look on the fifteen-year-old’s face. The way you knew that even though he had you by six inches and twenty pounds you’d push him all over the court those final eight minutes and to leave no doubt you stepped into his throat and said do something you nigger I fucking dare you.
You watch Russell weighing you like a hand of blackjack and know that Al told him you’re half Cherokee and half nothing and Russell’s probably thinking you’re the type of win at all costs goon he’s looking for so you stare back at him with your jaw locked and squared to give him reason to buy into every myth ever whispered while you trace your decisions back through time to determine how the only value anyone sees in you is this story you can’t escape.
Geoff Peck received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of North Dakota. His fiction and poetry have appeared in over a dozen journals and was nominated for Best New American Poets after winning the Academy of American Poets Thomas McGrath Award.
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