Sketches 3

1.
Hi, Jeffers, how are you?
Fine.
You know, I made you.
Yeah. I don’t know. I think I made myself.
Okay, cool.
Yeah.
So how do you feel, like, inside right now.
I feel stiff. I feel like that Looney Tunes skit, “Duck Amuck,” where it’s just Daffy the whole time and that hand comes out of the screen and draws the things around him or erases his mouth, you know? I feel like I am not made.
Well, I’m working on that.
Yeah, well come on, I want to get going, you know?
That’s what I’m doing.
What do you want to do tonight?
I don’t want it to be night, you know, I want it to be at the zoo. Except every time I go to the zoo it is hot as hell. I want it nice, like, you know when you hold your arm out and you can’t feel the temperature — there’s no hot or cold anywhere on it — like that.
All right, we can try that.
And I like the penguins.
It’s cold as hell in there, though.
Yeah, but it’s okay because it’s the penguins. It sets the mood really well because they are supposed to be cold.
Why do you like penguins so much?
I don’t know. I guess it’s the way they are always moving. And they have that new set-up where you can get really close to the tank — so close that you can reach over and touch them if you want, though they hate that.
Have you done that before?
Sure did. The first time I saw them they didn’t have that girl who stands in front of the display, so I just reached inside and touched one that was swimming on the surface of the water. (He shows the way he let the penguin slide under him fingertips as he speaks)
Do you want to do that now?
All right, let’s do it.

2.
Jeffers’ grinned out of the side of his mouth a little when he saw that the line to see the penguins was not very long. It must be because it’s so nice out, he thought, usually it’s so hot people are in more of a hurry to get somewhere cold. But it was so nice on this day he did not even have to use the bottle of suntan lotion his mother keeps in the center panel of her ’88 Oldsmobile. Jeffers’ heels stung with every step and he could swear he felt a slight vacuum in the middle of his stomach, but none of that mattered as the line for the exhibit neared. A boy with a Cardinals hat and Umbro shorts swung from the handrail leading up to the big glass sliding doors of the building. His father stood next to him, but was facing the opposite direction talking to a little girl holding his pinky finger in her palm. The man had a camera hanging from a strap around his neck.
“If I ever become a camera dad, please shoot me,” Jeffers said to his buddy Mike as they approached the end of the line.
“Oh, don’t worry, man, I will. I can do that for you.” Jeffers shot Mike a very large smile as he hoisted himself onto the handrail next to the family — the bar pressing heavily into his butt cheeks.

3.
A small penguin stooped on a ledge next to the entrance to the exhibit, and Jeffers watched as a young girl sitting on her father’s shoulders — her father looking the other way — reached out to pet it. The penguin’s neck stretched as it moved its head back and opened its beak. The girl yelped as the penguin snapped its beak on small girl fingers. Elbowing his buddy Mike in the ribs,
“Dude, did you see that? That penguin just lashed out and bit that girl. It was awesome.”
“No, man, I missed it.” Mike was looking over the shoulder of an old woman in front of him to the pool where the large penguin exhibit was.
“Oh, you missed it, man, it was great.”
Mike pushed into a small gap between the old lady and a fat woman with a green visor, and Jeffers followed him. The glass between the people and the penguins only went as high as Jeffers’ pecks, so he rested his arms along the top. The water level was only about three inches below the glass, so the stench of the penguin water went straight into the back of Jeffers’ nostrils, and he tightened his cheek muscles for a few seconds as he adjusted to the smell — a mix of cold salmon and morning breath, he thought.
Mike smacked Jeffers’ arm with the back of his hand and pointed to where Jeffers had just heard a splash.
“Dude, did you see that? This penguin tried to jump out of the water but it ran into this one that was already up there and it fell right back in.” When Mike laughed, his mouth opened all the way and he leaned back — his head back — and Jeffers thought he looked lanky for a second.
“No, dammit. I missed it. Oh shit, look at this one. It’s so close.” A penguin swimming on the surface of the water had come close to the glass where Jeffers and Mike stood moving slowly as though it were looking at something in the water below it.
“Touch it, dude,” Mike said — looking Jeffers straight in the eye — and Jeffers did. He reached his arm out and held his fingers just above the surface of the water. As the penguin moved under his hand, his fingers grazed the penguin’s back — the tight, wet surface was rougher than he had expected and Jeffers realized that the penguin was a lot longer than he thought it was as it flowed under his fingers as though he were not even there.

4.
Jeffers shivered hard right before he pulled open the glass door of the convenient store. Once inside, the rug sloshed under his foot as he stomped the snow off his shoe. His sock was wet with cold that had somehow made it under his foot, and he just wanted to get home.
“Marlboro Reds in a box,” he said to the cashier as his fingers searched his pocket for a dime to make 35¢.
“$3.43,” the dark-bearded cashier said.
“What? Why is it more?” Jeffers pulled his hand out of his pocket and let it dangle loosely down his leg.
“New tax. Just happen.” The man said, holding his hand out.
Jeffers glared at the man’s hand before pulling everything out of his left pocket to see if he had any more change. A used tissue, Marvin the Martian keychain with keys and three pennies. Jeffers dropped his shoulders and glanced at the Kool cigarette ad hanging from the ceiling above the cahier before reaching into his right pocket to pull out another one-dollar bill.

5.
Jeffers jumped on the couch, landing flat on his back — his head resting on a decorative red pillow with a flower pattern sewn onto the front in white thread. He bit down on the half-unwrapped granola bar and grabbed the TV remote from the scratched wooden coffee table. The large grains from the bar crushed softly between his molars as they turned to mush, and Jeffers craned his neck to look at the clock — too late to buy some string cheese. He peeled off the rest of the wrapper and crumpled it as small as he could before throwing it on the old brown shag carpet — he wrenched the second half of the bar into his mouth. Chewing with very large, slow bites, the bar shrunk and shrunk to a pool of grain.

6.
Jeffers slugged the shit out of the inflated clown standing in front of the Hotwheels and G.I. Joes in the toy store by his house. The plastic curled around his fist and touched his wrist before sprawling on the ground and sliding a few feet. Jeffers checked over his shoulder as the sand at the clown’s feet raised it back up — fist in the face again, and Jeffers giggled in his chest slightly. The clowns were $14.95 — a little too much, he thought. Maybe as a gag? Still too much.

7.
The steam downtown rose from the sewer lids, whisping and spreading whenever a car rode over it, but always forming again. Jeffers noticed a group of black kids, probably not older than 13, on bicycles riding around the large fountain with a statue of some dancers in the middle. They circled the fountain — one boy with a speed-bike lapped the others, heckling. Light from the Wendy’s sign across the street shining through the legs and arms of the dancers flickered as the forms circled. An arm moved, or maybe not.

8.
The Mississippi River smelled like shit, as usual, as Jeffers straightened his ankles so he wouldn’t twist them as he stumbled across the tops of the uneven cobblestones on the Landing. He was going to this bar turned club thing his buddies were at — he picked up a rock and threw it side-armed into the river. It didn’t skip, at least as far as he could see on the black shit water. He had just that week seen video on the news of a barge that sunk, but being this close to the river, he thought about how much it would suck to have to swim in it. They got the people off, though, he remembered. The lights from the “Casino Queen” docked on the other side of the river reached-out half the way to him and blinked and morphed as the wind blew across the surface. Some asshole behind him honked — there is no sidewalk, ass-face.

9.
Casey purred under Jeffers’ heavy hand — fur pushing through between his fingers, tickling a little as they touched the tender connection to his palm. Jeffers moved his pinky over to Casey’s black ear and rubbed it gently at the point where the cartilage meets bone. Casey rubbed his head against Jeffers’ finger. Picking the cat up, Jeffers held him close to his chest, rocking him like a baby. Casey wriggled a little, jumping out of Jeffers’ hands and running to the doorway. He stopped and looked back at Jeffers.
“Oh come on, I’m sorry. Don’t leave, Casey, come here. I won’t do it again.”
But Casey turned the corner and ran behind the wall in the next room.

10.
Blood sprayed slightly from Sam’s face as Jeffers’ fist smacked into his nose, and Jeffers could feel the cartilage bow under his knuckle, but it didn’t snap. Sam turned his back to Jeffers and fell to the ground, his hand quickly covering his bleeding nose as three other guys rushed towards him from the sides to keep him from falling on his face.
“I told you not to fuck with me, mother fucker, and now look at you — you see what happens, mother fucker, you see what happens?” Jeffers felt Mike’s hand gripping his right arm above the elbow as he pulled Jeffers away from the crowd that had formed around the bloody college kid. Jeffers could feel Mike’s fingers touching the gone in his arm, and as soon as he started walking away, he yanked it out of his grip.
“Lay off, man, I got it, I’m cool,” he said putting his hands in the air to show he was safe.
“I know, man, I know. We should just get out of here. I don’t feel like dealing with cops tonight.” Jeffers agreed and stepped up his rhythm. He thought about the blood spraying and looked at his right hand — a line of blood had already dried on the top of his middle finger and some drops had fallen on the back of his hand. With his left hand, he caressed one of the drops — crusty under his fingertips.